Telling
by Gojirob
Summary: In the wake of the Valiant fiasco, Nog and Jake are at odds. When Nog faces a tribunal, a Starfleet legend comes to DS9, with quite a bit on his agenda. The price of the War and daily life are about to come due for Captain Benjamin Sisko and his crew.
1. Prologue

Telling

By Rob Morris

Prologue

_**1**_

RED SQUAD AND COURAGE

By Jacob Louis Sisko

I would very much like to be writing a fluff piece right now, the first of many. I would like to have it so that these fluff pieces were merely the beginning of a career's worth of stories concerning the legendary exploits of Captain Timothy Watters. I would also like to have it so that years from now, Captain Watters and I could be heard exchanging stories of this war, and, God help us, any wars that come after this. I would like my old friend to needle me about how I doubted he could pull that first great covert mission off, and how I was proven so very, very wrong.

But I cannot write such a piece, even if I thought my editor would accept it. Because Cadet Watters and all but two of his elite cadet squadron are dead, and it is largely his fault. I will not say it was all his fault, for he had accomplices. Accomplices like his executive officer, Cadet Farris.

Accomplices like myself.

No, I will not tell you that a non-combatant locked in the brig somehow undid the whole ship. Whatever grand destiny my father may have, I myself don't possess that sort of power. But I played my role in sealing the Valiant's fate, just as surely as I am writing this.

At this point I suppose I should pre-empt some questions, so as to keep the focus on my topic. Firstly, I am Jake Sisko, and I am still the coward who ran in battle and left a friend behind to possibly die, and who survived to speak about it all only through the same dumb luck that had me firing blindly at attacking Klingons, only to collapse a roof on them instead of just myself. I don't speak defensively on this because of grief given me by Starfleet personnel in general. In fact, as my father predicted, all too many of them tell me they saw their first combat in my account. As often happens, it is those who have seen the least combat that judge my actions the most harshly. Yet at least most of them are open about their low opinion of me, resulting from this. As I will relate, some held this view without making me aware, and this served their cause as much as I did.

Another simple fact is that I did not choose to follow my father into Starfleet. The only qualifier I'll offer there is that when I told him my choice, we did not face a war. Somehow, the perception is out there that I decided against the Academy just as Dukat landed on DS9 with his new Dominion allies. That is no more true than the prejudicial story of my friend Ensign Nog bribing his way into Starfleet. If you met the two of us, you would rather wonder why I ever considered Starfleet, and why Nog ever considered anything else. He is a natural officer, and his mustering forward when war began was not an accident, anymore than was his piloting the runabout we were using to and from the Starbase, which is when we encountered the Valiant.

Jem'Hadar patrols can strike anywhere, but they are not everywhere. All I can say about the one that attacked us is that it was unusually bold, being that far into Federation territory. The Founders don't send them out to merely breed chaos. It's against their nature. With the Vortas planning it all, no strike just happens, and targets of opportunity may as well not be there, for the most part. They will fire on a hospital ship if it's in the kill zone, but they will not strike it just to strike it, unless that is the whole of their plan. No hesitation, but also no wasted shots or resources. That is the Dominion way. That said, there we were, and there we almost weren't, as our runabout was destroyed all too easily.

A wiser being than me once said that there's always someone stronger. That's what the Dominion attacker found out as Valiant decloaked and rescued us. I flatly concede several things to Red Squad, and one of them is my life and well-being. But whatever their skill and prowess, I am very glad that they were using a Defiant-Class. I was there when they were built, for no other purpose than turning back and killing the one enemy that may be more implacable than the Dominion. And while I did not lay out one sheet of armor plating, nor install a single circuit, nor do anything that makes the ship a battle-turner, I did give it one thing that I have received permission to tell you about. While my father and Captain Shelby were working specs, I researched Starfleet history. As I looked, I saw something that roughly defined the 2260's, known by some as Kirk's Golden Age. Phaser banks and photon torpedoes are still with us, and they were there before 2260 as well. But one thing has been done away with, power and accuracy needs trumping compactness. These were the handheld Type-1 phasers, the ones that could be hidden away in a clenched fist, if one were careful. That time has been called a 'cowboy' era, and these simple killing machines were a cowboy's weapon. Outside of practice ranges, their use is almost unheard of anymore. So when my father asked me on a lark if I had any notions about the outer aspect of Defiant's appearance, I told him about those old weapons, and the simple menace they conveyed, their size aside. So that is why a Defiant-Class really makes me feel safe. Because this is a ship so very advanced and powerful, Starfleet felt confident enough to let a kid dictate how it looked. I like to think my choice was a good one.

In the end, though, I remain a writer, someone who did not choose Starfleet despite the fact that nearly all my friends and family belong to it. Well, my grandfather doesn't, but as he is very apt to tell you, his own grandfather did. See, while my father is the heroic Captain Benjamin Sisko, my great-great grandfather was the decidedly non-heroic Admiral Brock Cartwright, the man who nearly brought us all to a deadly final war with the Klingons in 2293. The defeat suffered by him and his group of conspirators was the last great accomplishment of the man whose era I studied, Captain James T. Kirk. For some people, Starfleet is what Ambassador Spock called in the eulogy for his dear friend 'the first best destiny'. Some though, are apt to lose themselves in a place they do not belong. People like myself, my ancestor the Admiral, and people like Red Squad.

It seems odd, even as I write this, to compare myself with a group of young people capable of running a starship, not to mention a months-long campaign of harassment against a decidedly bloodthirsty enemy. But I also feel confident in saying that they did not belong in Starfleet. For while I am not Starfleet and likely never will be, I do know some simple things about it. One of the most fundamental is this : You Must Take Orders. You must take orders from the boldest admiral with the most brilliant plan for ending the war in one stroke. You must take orders from the most weak-kneed Tactical Officer, who at times seems capable only of cutting and running. You must take orders from the Captain only trying for glory, and from the Captain concerned only for his ship and his crew. You can dislike your orders. You can dislike who's giving the orders. You can raise objection to the orders. You can, within a certain reason and stricture, even question the orders. But a lot more often than not, you must obey those orders, and be prepared to do so quickly. I knew that I wasn't, so I screwed up my courage and told my father news I know he was at least a little thrown by. But I could not have separated what is often the necessary conflict between the stated mission and the orders of the moment. And that is why I compare myself to Red Squad, who knew only the mission they created for themselves, and the orders they felt like taking.

Not that I felt this way when Nog and I first came aboard Valiant. We were grateful to be alive, and perhaps a bit in awe of our hosts. Based on nothing more than their coming home alive, with Valiant whole and a few pursuing enemies destroyed, Red Squad would have been heroes. If they'd docked at DS9, I would not have been surprised to see my father request that many of them be mustered forward to his command. And yes, I would be writing that fluff piece I spoke of. For what they pulled off in that first instance was remarkable and noteworthy and praiseworthy and several other positive adjectives that fail me. What a story it might have been.

Nothing became clear right away, or even very quickly at first. At the start, I was pleased for my best friend, who had both the distinction of outranking the Squad that had once rejected him and then being asked to play a vital role in their astounding effort. Once again, he was where he belonged. But it did start to emerge, a little at a time, that I was certainly not where I belonged. Watters' definitely had a hint of disappointment in his voice when he recalled that I, as the son of Captain Sisko, had opted out of Starfleet. That he knew this threw me, till I recalled meeting Wesley Crusher during a stopover on DS9 as he trained with the being known as The Traveler. He had told me that the Academy grapevine was flatly unbelievable. During the period of his disgrace following the dissolution of his own Nova Squad, ironically the predecessor to Red Squad in many respects, he found out that a series of practical jokes aimed at him were directed through this grapevine from afar by a crewmember serving aboard The Enterprise-D, whom he had previously been involved with, to express her disappointment in his downfall. He added that her vast foreknowledge of him, once a sign of her attraction, now chilled him on many levels. There can be no doubt that the Academy is a rough and tumble place, meant to prepare cadets for what is an even more rough and tumble career. I decided that I could not have taken it. That I considered this choice to be mine and perhaps my father's business alone I now must count as the first sign of my deep naiveté.

If reporters seem to ask questions that we should know our subjects won't answer, it is solely because we don't know for certain what someone will and will not answer until we ask. If a reporter can be too pushy, they can also be too timid, and no one ever complains about one who's too timid. The classic image of the beleaguered military spokesperson fending off tens of variations of the same question they have very politely refused to respond to is both overblown and more dead-on then anyone on either side is comfortable with admitting. But again, if we don't ask, that we are just as derelict in our duty as that officer, were they to yield up choice information before their superiors deemed it appropriate. A reporter must also accept that certain structures are apt to be more closed against them than others. Failing to remember or accept this was my next great mistake.

I learned little that Cadets Watters and Farris hadn't told me initially, as I questioned the other crewmembers, save that none of them wanted to be questioned much, and that they only wanted to be asked questions that enabled them to sing the praises of Watters. While my friend Nog never fell into lock-step with this mind-set, he did quickly become ardent in urging me to take the evidence of our own senses above any reporter's methodology. Most of those senses told me what he was suggesting. That we were alive, thanks largely to this group of remarkable cadets who had done several things that were just short of miraculous, and who were now looking at immortality. Forgive me if I sound racist, but Nog is by heritage much better at arguing a point than I could ever hope to be.

Only in retrospect did my next big error hit me. I was arguing with a friend and roommate as a friend and roommate. I was allowing the regular back and forth that exists between two people with a short but fair amount of history to interfere with a serious discussion about a potentially dire situation. In fact, I should have bypassed all that and talked as two people who know how Starfleet runs. No, I don't wear the uniform, and you can add to that what you will. But I grew up next to it. The finest people I know live in it, and some have died and will die in it. I'll accept criticism of that uniform, but it better be spot-on, or you'll hear from me. Accuse me of the cowardice I admitted to when I started this. Just don't tell me I don't know how Starfleet runs. I was there during its finest hour, when the Wolf came to our door. Is there circuitry lining your face? Are you taking orders from a central mind? No? I know a lot of the people you can thank for that. I know some of the ones who drove the monsters to dust. I've met the man they violated and who played a role in my mother's death. And I only wish I'd sounded this vehement when I talked to Ensign Nog, because it is the Ensign, the only commissioned officer on that ship that I should have been talking to. I became so focused on who I was not that I forgot who I was, and so I also forgot to remind my friend of who he was.

The plan Watters presented before us was audacious. Yet that I knew of, he had the backing of his late Commanding Officer, and the existence of him and his crew was a fact beyond dispute. Nog, presented with a challenge worthy of Chief Miles O'Brien, felt certain it could be done. I was less stunned than delighted when it came off. The scan was made, and on so many levels, the Dominion's newest warship was in Federation hands. You don't need to know Starfleet or be a reporter to realize what this meant. The enemy would send out their worst, and our forces would have them before sensors even registered the new warship's approach. One major engagement with the Dominion utilizing these fatally compromised ships could conceivably even end the war. For wars comparatively bigger than this one have turned on less. Mentally, I began to write the fluff piece I spoke of. Forget Nog. I was going to be Captain Watters' biggest booster. I even imagined hearing a few less snickers about the callowness and inexperience of the young. And all that could easily have become reality. I cannot truly speak for the possible errors of others. But again, this would have been a good time to ask Nog to assume command. Again, though, this was not what I did.

I don't know what innate stupidity possessed me to simply assert what I thought my father would have done. I was not and am not my father, and as Watters himself had reminded me early on, I was not Starfleet. I repeatedly said what Benjamin Sisko, who was not there, would have done. How he would have taken the scans and darted back to safety. In fact, even as I did this, I half-wondered when they would simply tape my mouth shut, or the equivalent. It was clear that I wasn't getting through to them, and that I was annoying them all, including and perhaps especially my best friend. What was really going on there would become clear. But for then, I felt I had to try and dissuade the crew from its new goal, destroying the Dominion ship they had just risked so much scanning. How I went about it confirmed anew how much I had to learn.

By this point, the only person on board who would speak to me was Cadet Dorian Collins. She seemed nervous about her position and her place within Red Squad. Did I exploit this? I hope I didn't, but I was growing desperate. Despite the expertise at hand, and this was considerable, I couldn't help but recall the last time I had seen an entire fleet face one overlarge ship that in theory should have gone down in plasma flames. That one ship was shaped like a cube, and it took apart fifty ships like they were nothing. One of its successors nearly took out Defiant itself, staffed by the best of the best on Deep Space Nine. And unlike the Borg, the Dominion wasn't known for leaving irrelevant, crippled foes alive in its wake. It was from Cadet Collins that I learned of Watters' darkest secret. He was on stimulants, barely sleeping at all. People who don't sleep can have waking dreams. Worse still, they can end up living in those dreams, and taking others in with them. Dismissed except for her limited medical expertise by the others, something I've heard called for 'ringbanger' syndrome, Dorian was at first willing to talk, just a bit. Then, she warned me not to ask any more questions, just as Watters and Farris had. Nog did the same, when I brought my evidence. Was I angry with him, or with the others, as I finally was taken off to the brig? Yes, but not as upset as I was with myself. For it was only when I was alone and wholly unable to affect things any further that I saw the role I had really played.

Even in a group as small and tight as Red Squad, there had to have been questions about Watters' actions. Suppressed, kept silent, discouraged, sure. But non-existent? I couldn't believe that. As Watters and Farris grew ever bolder, how to shut down those questions must have been a concern. Then they rescued me. A reporter who had Starfleet blood but failed to join up. A self-confessed coward in a critical instance. Someone who had stayed on DS9 when it became Terok Nor again briefly. A yapping mouth that wouldn't shut up and wouldn't stop asking questions. I was a godsend. An outsider to rally against. A unifying force to drive their children's crusade. They showed that they were tolerant, and then I blew that. As the Valiant came apart under the fire of a warship that didn't care where its weak spot was supposed to be, I was rescued by my friend from certain doom. Jake Sisko hadn't caused the Valiant's loss, or the deaths of its crew. But nor had I done one damned thing to stop or even slow it. All my naiveté did was speed things along.

In the Sickbay at Deep Space Nine after we were rescued, Nog admonished me to tell the truth about what happened. The truth is, we none of us came off very well. But I can only give an accurate account of what I saw happening, and my role in it. Until Starfleet's main investigation is done, and I can offer a more comprehensive view, I hope that this meets with the standards of Ensign Nog, in my view, one of the only heroes of that debacle.

_**2**_

His reading done, Nog disdainfully tossed the PADD back at Jake.

"I thought I asked you to tell the truth."

After he left, Jake sat, stewed, and punched the table a few times. Then, he hit transmit and sent the article to his editor.


	2. Part One

Part One

_**1**_

O'Brien nodded at the younger officer, who stood in an anxious pose reminiscent of his father, and perhaps even classically Ferengi.

"Ok, Nog, I've read it again. I just don't see what has you so upset. I mean, you come off rather well."

"But Chief, what about Red Squad?"

"Them? They don't come off so well."

Miles saw the ensign make a full turn, as though gathering energy with which to power his argument.

"Don't you see? This is a cleverly disguised anti-Starfleet diatribe. Jake walked into it with an agenda, because he resented the restrictions Captain Watters placed upon him."

O'Brien now was certain he had made a mistake getting involved in this. Memories of himself, Julian Bashir, and a possible cure for the Jem'Hadar's addiction to Ketrecel White all ending in a messy clash came back at Miles, along with the realization that the memories weren't all that old.

"Nog, he addresses all that, and seems to understand his own role in running afoul of the power structure that *Cadet* Watters had built up. In fact, I was reminded of his article on his dealings with Weyoun during the Dominion takeover. Ehh, he flagellates himself a bit much, and the style switches a bit abruptly between his personal opinion and what's known beyond dispute, but not so much you can't tell which is which. If it is a disguised anti-Starfleet piece, then it's a damned clever disguise."

The young man spoke with the fervor of a Bajoran Mass Cleric trying to persuade a group of Pagh Wraith cultists back to the path of The Prophets. It was getting on O'Brien's nerves.

"But that is how he draws you in. He hides his contempt for how Starfleet is run by way of a few, vague patriotic-sounding statements. He slams Starfleet with his left fist while stroking it with his right palm."

For some reason, O'Brien found this image more puzzling than disturbing. The motion mechanics of it wouldn't play in his engineer's mind.

"Nog, just how did you arrive at this conclusion?"

"Simple, Chief. Red Squad was composed of Starfleet Academy's very best. Well, to so harshly criticize Starfleet's best is to thumb one's nose at all of Starfleet, his other words aside. I am so disappointed in Jake."

Miles decided to use a small lie as an opening to break away from his sometime-protégé's dark night of the ledger.

"Well, I guess I am, too. After all, he failed to use certain information I gave him in the article. Well, we'll speak to him about it later. Right now, I have to..."

Nog stopped him, as Miles was half-sure he would, but prayed he would not.

"Chief, what information didn't he use? It could be useful in showing how very biased the article really was."

O'Brien frowned. If he couldn't be gentle in ditching Nog, then any method would have to do.

"Nog, the truth is, he didn't use my information because it couldn't be verified. It failed to meet journalistic standards of proof. I was a little annoyed because I felt my expertise should have been enough, but Jake explained how a personal opinion lacking direct evidence as its back-up should not be used, with even an expert's blessing. My conclusion would not have made Red Squad look one tiny bit better. In fact, it would do very much the opposite."

Nog stood there, very much uncomprehending.

"Chief?"

O'Brien painfully realized that his own experience contained no smooth and neat analog to what Nog was now putting himself through.

"Did you ever even once, during or since the Valiant, ask yourself why the Jem'Hadar were attacking at or near a Federation Starbase a fair distance within our territory?"

"We-we're at war."

It all seems so simple to the young, thought O'Brien.

"Well, yes. And while their attacks have grown bolder and deeper, they are also always marked by a hideous level of coordination. No improvisation. No Kirk-like bending of the rules. Just Schwarzkopf's Law Of Overwhelming Force, combined with a willingness to fight on up to 90% losses in some cases. Now, we've turned that around on them, and even forced them to get tricky and trickier still. Yet they still tend not to maraud, and like Jake said in the article, they almost don't believe in randomly pursuing targets of opportunity. Your pod escaping the Valiant points to that. So why was a relatively small craft attacking a hardened target of limited military or psychological value? Ferenginar would hardly change sides if the Starbase nearest them were to be destroyed."

Nog nodded.

"One of the Lesser Ninety Rules Of Acquisition states that 'A Partner Who Knows Occasional Losses Is A Partner Doing Business'. You don't just run off when a shipment or two goes bad, or a warehouse burns down."

"Okay. So why was this Dominion ship attacking either your runabout, the Starbase, or both?"

Miles took his silence as an answer.

"Nog, I firmly believe that the target in question was Valiant itself. Maybe they thought this Starbase was where Valiant docked. Maybe they thought your runabout was a supply ship. But I'd lay down real money that the enemy craft was hunting the mystery ship that was pounding their patrols. It may very well be, Ensign, that the people who rescued you are the ones who..."

"STOP!"

A glare like that from the resin of a quantum torpedo drop shot off of O'Brien's face.

"Did you just raise your voice to me, Ensign?"

Nog was breathing hard, and was only technically backing down.

"Yes, sir-I did, sir. Wouldn't you be upset if a commanding officer that you deeply respected was being called a maverick and a renegade with possible mental problems?"

Miles had no smooth analog. But he had a rough one.

"He was. And that's because he was a maverick and a renegade with possible war trauma. Captain Maxwell Of The Rutledge. I visit him twice a year at Tantalus, and he still cries his eyes out, fearful that his actions helped inspire the founding of The Maquis. And Nog? He was one HELL of a lot more correct in his actions than your Cadet Watters. And I repeat-Cadet Watters. Not Captain. _Cadet_."

Miles felt instant regret for his words, and for the harshness of his tone. But in the week since Jake's article had been published, Nog had been completely impossible. Polite words had failed to persuade him to agree to disagree with the majority of those he spoke with. O'Brien decided he would apologize to Rom, if he asked for an apology. But Nog would have to wait a while for anything of that sort.

_**2**_

As the Ferengi ensign sat alone, he was visited briefly by his uncle. Quark held to his usual balance of disguised affection for his family and a hostility to the paths Nog and his father had taken.

"Regarding Jake Sisko? Teljuq's work on the Uncoded Rules Of Acquisition clearly states that, while it is sometimes necessary to bite the hand that feeds you, biting it off is always poor form."

Nog wasn't taking this. His uncle could only scold him. He couldn't reprimand him.

"What makes you say that I bit off Jake's hand?"

"All I know, nephew, is that if it were me you allowed to be taken off to the brig by some snot-nosed narcaddict with delusions of grandeur, I'd have you cleaning Holosuite Fourteen with a toothbrush. Number Fourteen is Morn's favorite, by the way."

"Uncle, just what are you getting at?"

"Simply put, your life-ledger is in the red, as regards your friend. Oh, I warned you against these hu-mons. On the other hand, if you are going to indulge in their tricky gifts of acceptance and free friendship, it might be a good idea to only take these gifts from those hu-mons not convinced of their own emerging divinity. Although, since Jake is looked over by the Prophets, I guess he could actually get away with that. This Watters, though? He reminded me of Brunt."

Nog was feeling ever more alone.

"Captain Watters wasn't convinced of his godhood. Jake's article just makes him sound that way."

Quark topped off his nephew's root beer before walking off.

"Actually, I formed that opinion about Watters from your personal account of what happened aboard the Valiant. Your father and your Moogie are good storytellers, but I always have to read between the lines with you."

_**3**_

Nog next attempted to gain support for his position from what he thought he would be an obvious source. Problem was, these things were not so obvious to the source in question.

"Children should not play at war."

Nog seemed stunned by Worf's simple declaration.

"But, sir. I've heard you say on many occasions that a Klingon boy is counted as a man from the day he can fully lift a bat'leth."

Worf downed his prune juice before responding.

"That is true. However, those are Klingon boys-and girls. Humans keep their children back, feeling a prolonged preparation period is in order. I am told that until a certain age, Ferengi regard their children as having certain properties of a traded commodity."

Nog seemed to shake at those words. But he said nothing, presuming for the moment that Worf didn't know Rom's marriage history.

"Which way do you think is better, sir?"

Nog felt certain of Worf's answer, and would rebuild his argument from there. He thought.

"Master Kor once told me his opinion of such things. He said that Feklehr and Molor and all the beasts of Grethor held less terror for the Klingons of his age than did a callow Iowan farm boy who never saw deep space until he was past two decades old. He reasoned from this that Humans failing to be conquered by the Empire was therefore no accident."

Nog moved quickly to recover.

"There you are! I mean, Kirk survived Tarsus Four, and Governor Kodos, when he was not even fifteen."

Worf looked at the ensign, and it was easy to see that he was not as patient as O'Brien.

"That is because he was not a native of that world, and therefore not on any list of the doomed. He ran, because this was all a boy could do. Even a Klingon youth would be forced to do the same. He survived, and became a legal witness to the nightmare when it was done. In short, Ensign Nog, the youngest Captain in Starfleet history for that era-at age thirty-one, not nineteen-lived to become a hero to some and a nightmare to others, because he wished to live and return home. You seem to think your Cadet Watters and his clique were like Kirk. I only wish they had been. For as a cadet, he would have returned home. As Captain Picard and Captain Sisko would have done. Consider the female Captain thought lost in the Badlands, until recently. Why is she spoken of? Because her goal is to return home with all her crew. A glorious life is lived because it is our choice, and a glorious death is died when we have no choice. In-between, we live as long as we can, and let fate tell us when glory is to be had, one way or the other."

Nog stood up, but wisely did not raise his voice.

"But wasn't the final destruction of the Dominion ship an opportunity presented by fate? Wouldn't many Klingons sneer at the Valiant's crew, had they only returned with mere scans and information?"

Worf walked away, but turned back one last time.

"Fate also uses these opportunities to fool us. As for the sneering? Master Kor also said that in a war, all sides have heroes, and all sides have fools. Your goal is not to die for your people. It is to make the enemy combatant die for theirs."

"Did Kor say that?"

Worf shook his head.

"No. That last part was Patton. But Kor would have said it."

_**4**_

Nog got out of his uncle's bar. There was no point talking to his father. Every time Valiant was brought up, Rom simply started crying and held his son. Surely, someone, somewhere, had to see his point of view. But Doctor Bashir was no help in this.

"Nog, I will be brutally frank. Cadet Collins told me the types and levels of stimulants Cadet Watters was taking in. Apparently, he read that, when facing the 'Space Amoeba' that destroyed the Constitution-Class Intrepid, Doctor McCoy had given such things to the Enterprise crew. There's logic for you. In any event, if I myself was taking the cocktail Dorian told me of, I would greatly fear for my life and my sanity. And yes, that is even with the 'extras' my parents placed upon me. Stimulants are for rare or emergency use. They are not available so that a young man may sit in a wrongful chair, assuming he is about to join the ranks of the great ones."

_**5**_

If Nog thought he would gain help from Kira, he was just as wrong as he was with Worf.

"Yes. Yes, I was fighting the Cardassians when I was younger than you. But Nog? It was never our desire to fight, and certainly it was never our desire for our children to fight. And die. Let's not forget that children who fight are children who die. I've prayed to the Prophets to watch over the souls of your friends aboard Valiant. I almost admire what they did, and what they tried to do. But I've buried too many friends to see the glory in what they did anymore. And it wasn't like it was even necessary. That Dominion ship wasn't their first super weapon, and it won't be their last. They can produce more ships, more Jem'Hadar, and more Vorta. But where do the families of the Valiant's crew go to make more of them? Besides, didn't you yourself say that Watters rode you all over a cliff or something?"

"He was a great man who made one great and tragic mistake. That doesn't diminish him."

Kira looked at Nog with realization and then pity.

"Blessed Prophets. You think his only failure was in not taking out the Dominion ship?"

Nog winced under her gaze.

"He could have planned it better, sure. But in the end-"

"In the end, Nog, a Defiant-Class ship, one of those that my people depend on to keep the Cardassian flag from again flying over the Vedek Council Chambers, was lost to a group of children playing dress-up. Our Emissary built that ship. It is almost an Orb in the eyes of some. So the Valiant's loss wasn't merely Starfleet's. Don't you dare think that, or compare my youth, spent with the blood of too damned many on my hands, face and hair, to Watters and his crusade."

"But what about the article, Major? Jake tries to grab credit for Defiant? Isn't that like blasphemy?"

Kira directed him out of Ops into the lift.

"He claimed credit for its shape, Nog. Being a writer, he seems to know effective imagery."

Nog shot off one more as the lift took him away.

"And how to manipulate it."

_**6**_

Garak merely commented that placing headstrong children in charge of such a ship was a scheme worthy of his Obsidian Order days. Morn went on a tear, and as always, talked just about forever, till Nog feared his lobes falling off. Nog later spied Jake waiting by an entry ramp as passengers disembarked. He considered ending this, but decided to wait till Sisko had met whoever he was waiting for. Who he was waiting for made Nog's eyes go wide.

"Jake?"

"Hi, Dorian."

It was Cadet Collins, looking somewhat slimmer and many times less haggard. To Nog's shock, she actually lightly embraced Jake.

"It's still hard to believe we survived all that."

Jake chuckled.

"My spine still hasn't forgiven me for that trip in the escape pod. You look good."

"Well, mental and physical rehab for eight weeks will do that. I never told you, but I was taking 'help' of my own during the voyage."

"You did seem to be in withdrawal in the pod, but I thought it was just cramped space and exhaustion."

Nog emerged from his remove, fuming and nearly foaming.

"Dorian-how can you stand there and hug him like that? Didn't you read his article?"

Collins nodded.

"Yes. Before he sent it to his editor. I approved it, to the extent that matters."

Nog rolled his eyes.

"Didn't you read what he said? He said none of Red Squad belonged in Starfleet!"

Collins bit down, then spoke.

"Nog, I spent that mission feeding candy to a drug addict who didn't even respect me. The person I was under Tim Watters command didn't belong in Starfleet. Anymore than-never mind. I'm not supposed to talk to you, anyway."

"Why not?"

Jake tried to speak.

"Nog, you better go and talk-"

The Ferengi turned on him and yelled.

"Shut Up! When I want to hear more distortions, half-truths, and outright lies, then I'll make an offering to you, Oh Blessed-By-Wormhole!"

_**7**_

A number of Bajoran heads turned at these words. Before things could escalate further, Jadzia Dax appeared.

"Ensign Nog. I am to escort you to see Captain Sisko. Now."

Her look, partly borrowed from her husband, left no doubt that she meant every word. On the way to Captain Sisko's office, he spoke.

"I suppose I don't have to ask your opinion of the article."

Dax shook her head.

"Well, Jake's style still needs polishing. But I'd prefer not to hear him called a liar. And Nog? I am hereby ordering you to appear at the next Bajoran Mass and apologize for that low-class, ignorant comment. Got me?"

"Aye, sir."

"Also, to answer your question, I've had lots of children, and I hope to have more with Worf. I've sent them off to battle. But only when they showed they were ready. Not one damned minute before. Further, consider this. We know of all kinds of alternate realities. Worf has seen quite a few, and we all know about the Mirror World. Now, just for a moment, imagine a reality where strong, knowing children heroically take up the slack for lazy, ignorant adults. Maybe one or two of them even emerge to save the whole cosmos from an unimaginable evil. Do you see it?"

Nog closed his eyes and smiled just outside of Sisko's office.

"Yes, I can see it, like it was really there."

"Good. Now, Nog, think of one more thing about that alternate universe."

"Yes, Lieutenant Commander?"

She had him open his eyes and look at her.

"This isn't that place. Now go see Ben."

_**8**_

The other world popped like a balloon, and Nog still felt like the one he inhabited was deflating. Sisko gestured for him to sit down.

"Ensign, the Valiant Tribunal will be held here, on DS9. We're going to hash all this out, once and for all."

"Yes, sir. I saw Cadet Collins coming on board, and presumed as much."

"You presumed a lot, Nog. But I won't go into that here. Our informal meeting on Valiant is in the past, and the tribunal lies just ahead. I really wish you hadn't been talking to all those officers, about the article."

Nog puzzled.

"Why not, sir? Aren't I allowed?"

Sisko seemed less angry than concerned for Nog.

"You are allowed. But now, all those people can be called to testify, as to what you said."

"Tes-Test-Testify-sir?"

Sisko now almost looked ill.

"Ensign. I am relieving you of duty and confining you to the guest room in your father's quarters. You are not to speak to Jake or anyone in Starfleet except me, and your counsel."

"Counsel!"

"Against my wishes, one of the matters that Starfleet will decide at this tribunal is whether or not you should be charged with dereliction of duty, for not taking command of the Valiant away from Cadet Watters. I'm sorry, Nog. Jadzia will walk you there, and again, you must speak to no one except me, your counsel, and your parents."

"Sir, did the article-?"

"This was in the pipeline long before that hit, Nog. Now go and rest up. It begins in three days."

Sisko watched him go, not resuming his work for a full ten minutes.

As Jadzia led him to Rom's quarters, Nog was indeed silent and he looked like he'd been hit with a club on heavy stun. At the quarters, Leeta greeted Dax and her stepson. When the door closed, Nog blankly walked over to the wall and set sound dampeners to their maximum, a level well above most such devices, thanks to Rom's skill. Nog then sat down on the couch, and began to cry his eyes out while Leeta held him, telling him something he could no longer make out above his sobs.


	3. Part Two

Part Two

_**1**_

While Sisko empathized, he moved to end the pointless meeting.

"What would you like me to do?"

Rom looked the captain in the eyes from where he was seated.

"Tell me that you won't let them send my boy to prison. He hasn't done anything wrong."

Ben had always known there was more to this man than most saw. That it came forward most fiercely in defense of his son surprised him not at all.

"I'll do what I can."

Rom shook his head almost violently.

"That's not enough! I want your word, as a father of a son, that you will not let them take Nog away from me. He's my only child, Captain."

Sisko gave the word he knew he couldn't keep.

"Ensign Nog is assigned to my command. God and Prophets help anyone who tries to change that. Because that's the kind of help they'll need."

Rom looked and sounded grateful.

"I know what the regulations say, Captain. I know that you won't be the one who makes that call. But the fact that you would say that when I asked it of you means everything to me. Sir? Is it at all possible that you could persuade Jake to talk to Nog again? He's so lost, right now."

"Rom, Jake has tried to speak to Nog since the article came out. He's mostly been rebuffed. But now, I can't permit them to speak. Jake is a main witness at the Valiant tribunal. Once that's done, we can try and reconcile them again."

Rom closed his eyes.

"By then, it may be too late. Is it possible that Jake had it wrong? That maybe he was-quite understandably-bitter about his being taken to the brig?"

Sisko knew enough to not see this as an attack on Jake or his truthfulness.

"I asked him about that. He conceded that yes, he was bitter. But Rom, both his original deposition, along with those of Nog and Cadet Collins, all paint a very similar picture of the loss of the Valiant and its crew of cadets. If anything, Jake's article is mild compared to Collins' supplementary deposition. It seems Cadet Farris began to grow fond of personal verbal abuse as time went by."

"Then why isn't she charged? Or this Watters character? Or Collins herself? After all, she fed her CO narcotics, without even really being licensed to do so."

"Nog was the last commissioned officer to set foot on Valiant. He was the only real Starfleet presence on that doomed ship."

Rom went for the door, still feeling like his beloved boy was being scapegoated.

"And also the only Ferengi."

_**2**_

Ben allowed the man his bitterness, which to no small extent was his own as well. No one in Starfleet was saying that the loss of the Valiant had been Nog's fault. Yet at the same time there were forces that needed to search for a head to lop off, large lobes or small. Jake had called it right. Watters and his bunch, who could have on multiple occasions returned home as heroes, were instead posthumous embarrassments to the uniforms they had yet to truly earn.

"Personal Log. Did all of Starfleet contribute to what happened aboard the Valiant? Once upon a time, the only maverick in it was a man with a will of neutronium and enough common sense to know that he could not be a maverick on all occasions. Now? Now we are a fleet still weakened by significant officer defections to a cause that never seemed to know just who it really opposed, till the real opposition came in and wiped them away. We are a fleet still wondering whether the treaty that drove these officers away was ever a good idea, particularly in how it was administered. We are a fleet that seems subject to the whim of every individual admiral with an agenda. And our Captains? My devil's deal with Garak is merely the sin that I am fully cognizant of. In this climate, is a group of delusional cadets even worth noting?"

He stopped recording. Of course it was worth noting, he knew. The ideal had to be drilled into the young so that when it came up against the reality, harsh and ugly actions would remain harsh and ugly. For what would come if the harsh and ugly were the ideal to start with? How long before such cynicism bred nightmares like the Cardassian court that once held Chief O'Brien came to Earth, playing to deep fears and high ratings? No, he thought. Ben Sisko was a good man who had brought down another good man for no other reason than that man's coup would have forever sacrificed the highest ideal to the harshest, ugliest realities possible. Admiral Leyton's insular delusion had not been allowed to destroy the Federation. Nor would the delusion of Cadet Watters, and nor would the delusion that putting Nog in a penal colony would be allowed to destroy a young officer. Not so that those who had done nothing to stop the Valiant's loss could say they had in fact, done something.

"Constable? Please come to my office. I need your-expertise."

_**3**_

When Odo was seated, Sisko began with a courtesy.

"Are you sure you don't mind doing this?"

Odo shook his head.

"Captain, any question and answer session with a Starfleet officer that doesn't involve the words, Dominion, Founder, shapeshifter or the like is time to be treasured, as far as I'm concerned. Besides, on some levels, I know that keeping Nog in Starfleet turns his uncle's stomach. Which, needless to say, is something I live for."

Sisko shrugged.

"Constable, guide me. No one in Starfleet will say a word about why Nog is being made an example of. I can guess the basics, but the specific whys and wherefores are eluding me entirely."

Odo seemed to lightly chuckle.

"Poor Jake thinks he's naive. But at least he realized that a power structure trying to protect itself will close ranks against outsiders."

"I'm open to suggestions, Constable. Very open."

Odo held up an initializer plug from a small Kecuit trade vessel.

"The smuggler in question had done such a good job in covering his tracks, even Quark was legitimately unaware of his activities. So it was that lacking all docu-trail evidence, I was forced to look into his ship's maintenance logs from while he was docked here. Seems he had avoided a lot of telling docu-logging by making several short trips between here and Bajor. Done the right way, you can erase your footprints by increasing your bother in making the trips. Most people would never do that. No patience for it, when one big-and thoroughly logged-trip will accomplish the same thing. Yet by making all those short-trips, he wore out his initializer plug, which had to replaced three times in the same week. Some, on the other hand, go years without even seeing this kind of plug. Confronted with the hole in his schemes, he confessed to everything."

Odo lay the plug down on Sisko's desk.

"First rule-look for the evidence that your opponent doesn't realize is evidence."

Sisko held up the small part.

"I don't think there's even this much left of Valiant. Where would I start?"

"By asking the ridiculously basic. Like-what was Red Squad?"

Sisko could not see what Odo meant by this.

"They were a squadron of elite cadets from Starfleet Academy."

Odo raised an opened hand.

"What made them so special? Who declared them so, and why?"

Benjamin began to feel like his chair was moving backwards. These were some very pointed, if simple questions. He punched up the files on the Academy and its hierarchy. He was surprised by what he found.

"Well. That shows what I know. I would have thought that Red Squad simply distinguished itself and moved into its favored position as time went by."

Odo came around the desk and looked at the screen.

"No. It rather seems they were formed from the best of the best of all the other squadrons, in the second half of their first semester."

That thought gave Sisko a chill.

"In other words, they went in, already knowing that they were the cream of the crop."

Odo kept looking over the file as he spoke.

"I recall Doctor Bashir telling me that, in solids, too much cream clogs the arteries."

Sisko nodded.

"Or it is made into butter, which goes rancid under hot lights. Alright. If this was a program within the Academy structure, what was it called?"

Odo went back around the desk to sit down.

"Or-who was its sponsor? Academic programs are often named for someone. Perhaps someone who can even be contacted."

Sisko shook his head.

"Not likely. The Red Squad was formed under The Excellence In Cadets Program, also known as-"

Ben rolled his eyes as he finished.

"...The James T. Kirk Award."

Odo almost snorted.

"Which is just a bit like giving an Andorian child Shran's Oath-Dagger and asking them not to draw blood with it."

Sisko was forced to agree.

"You take a group of idealistic, talented young people, and you tell them they are the very best, heirs by proxy to a galactic legend. Then, you give them a misguided secret mission supposedly meant to ensure the future security of The Federation, a mission sanctioned by one of Starfleet's topmost admirals. The Admiral is punished. They, on the other hand, are sent on a field trip aboard the Fleet's newest, shiniest, most powerful ship. Watters didn't need stimulants. His ego alone could have knocked out a whole Dominion Fleet, by the time they were through massaging it."

Odo nodded.

"Puts certain things in perspective, doesn't it? But does this give you anyone immediate to talk to?"

"Yes, it does. Kirk's real heir, at least in blood. Professor Kirk, head of Exobiology and a Senior Regent at the Academy, is the son of James Kirk's brother. He's also Admiral Saavik's bondmate. As a family member, he'd be given courtesy considerations on how such a program is run. Ironic to consult him, though."

"How so?"

Sisko smiled, albeit a bit grimly.

"The story goes that, after the Denevan Parasite Plague killed his parents and brothers, a very worshipful seven-year-old Peter Kirk asked his Uncle what any seven-year-old would probably ask."

Odo guessed quickly.

"Uncle, let me stay here. With you."

"Kirk couldn't allow it, of course. The boy would have been a casualty at some point, and that was assuming the entire ship wasn't lost. That Enterprise was the only Constitution-Class to complete its five-year mission and return intact. Many others met horrible fates, including one noteworthy vessel called : USS Defiant. Kirk may have eventually called this life a game for the young, but he didn't mean that young. Later on, Professor Kirk was one of the few to argue against families on starships. After Picard's crew had their run-in with the Aldeans, it was almost reconsidered again. This time, he urged sticking with the choice that had already been made."

"But you've never had your doubts about it, have you?"

Sisko looked a bit misty as he finished with Odo.

"I didn't. That is, until Wolf 359."

_**4**_

Sisko left his office after placing the call to Professor Kirk. It would be several hours before a response came, owing to the older man's schedule. So Ben decided to go to Garak's for a fitting - among other things.

"You present a puzzle to me, Captain. Most of my customers who gain weight don't do enough exercise to properly distribute it. And don't tell me it's the middle of the war. I've seen many a fighting Gul turn into a walking Cardassian pot pie, as it were."

"Garak, if I ask you for your advice or opinion, will it remain at that?"

The tailor smiled.

"If that's where you wish it to remain, Captain."

"Then that's what I wish. As a former spy who knows the Federation and has seen the aftermath of many a failed mission on all sides of the borders, can you offer me any insight as to why they're bothering to target Nog in this Valiant fiasco? Nowadays, dereliction of duty ranks right up there with treason and cowardice in the Starfleet criminal code, and I have to wonder why the Fleet is trying to push it in so morally murky and awkward a situation as this. There were only three survivors, and Nog is responsible for saving them all. Wouldn't you think the powers at Starfleet would have better things to do?"

Garak cut a swatch of cloth from the material meant for Sisko's 'downtime' uniform. It was meant to be comfortable yet official looking, so that if the captain was in it when a crisis struck, he could at least feel acceptably attired.

"Captain, how is Gul Dukat doing?"

Sisko was puzzled, but answered the question.

"I told you. The last I personally saw of him just prior to his final escape, he was completely insane. I'd expect he's more coherent by now, but not really any better."

Garak pulled up a holo of the casual green tunic worn by Starfleet captains a century back. To his design he added the belt-strap with Starfleet insignia, but discarded the rest.

"One might say that he's been on the edge for quite some time. Possibly since losing this station the first time, during the withdrawal."

Sisko assumed for the moment that he was being guided, and so did not yet demand Garak return to the subject he'd come to talk about.

"Well, we all know what caused the final push. Poor Ziyal."

Garak nodded sharply.

"Exactly. The daughter who betrayed him by choosing me. The daughter whose existence caused his family to disown him. The daughter who stayed with him during the lowest period in his life, and was a palpable reminder of that period. Think of the games Dukat has played with Major Kira. Yet has he ever once suggested that Tora was the Major's half-sister?"

"No. The time frame is all wrong for that to be possible."

"Captain-Dukat can manipulate the facts well enough to have made my father believe he was The Emissary. My point is, despite how close Tora and the Major were-no manipulative innuendo. Unusual for a man like that, don't you think?"

Sisko made as simple a declarative statement as he knew how.

"He was a father. He loved his daughter."

Garak smiled.

"As Tain in his way loved me. I seem to recall Mister Worf mentioning a Ferengi Daimon who targeted his former captain on two occasions, at great expense, all to avenge a lost son. Oh-and following one of your last excursions to the so-called Mirror World, did I or did I not see you throw 'Smiley' O'Brien against a bulkhead upon your return, literally issuing a threat against his very manhood, if he should ever again use Jake as bait to get you to cross over?"

Sisko hung his head, just a bit.

"That was unfortunate. But when he made that 'joke' about restarting the Empire on his side..."

"Captain, I am not judging you. In fact, my desire to never meet my own fawning counterpart makes me applaud any effort to end that literally narcissistic series of adventures. Besides, it only proves my point. A child's death or the threat of such can reduce a Starfleet officer to barbarism. It can make a high-ranking Ferengi forego profit entirely, prevent a spy-master from simply tying up a loose end, and it can break a master of survival and escape as though he were nothing. Do you follow me?"

Suddenly, Sisko did.

"The parents of the Valiant's cadet crew. But why Nog? Cadet Collins is alive, as well. I don't want her punished either, but she at least was a long-term part of their structure."

Garak bid Sisko be still as the main fitting scan commenced.

"Worried parents, and I imagine they were worried, tend to form support groups. Doubtless, the same parents who are demanding 'justice' know the girl's parents, and don't wish to hurt them or her. Jake is a civilian. But Nog?"

Garak held up his right hand, then counted off using his fingers.

"I am a worried parent who, after many hard months, is now a grieving parent."

First finger.

"Why were the children unsupervised?"

Second finger.

"Why didn't you try to find them?"

Third finger.

"What kind of story are you telling me? I know that *my* child would never engage in such a wild scheme as you're describing."

Fourth finger.

"What were they doing out there in the first place? Starfleet will never answer that one right now, so I imagine things only got worse from there. Which leads to the last big question."

Fifth finger.

"How is it that a Ferengi is in Starfleet, and why didn't he, a commissioned officer, sit on those children and make them go home?"

Sisko shook his head.

"That's not entirely a fair question."

Garak began the replication process, made a bit slower by the fine details such a piece required.

"Don't tell me that. I am a grieving parent. I want someone punished. Is there anyone who can or will be punished, or do we have to make the press aware, and remind everyone of the Leyton fiasco?"

Sisko had of course realized that Nog was being used to show that someone was being punished. He just hadn't settled on it all being so very simple a thing as this.

"Let's go back to Admiral Leyton's attempted coup. It's a matter of public record. Sending Red Squad away doesn't help him, and their role was a footnote in most news accounts."

Garak ran an analysis of the replicated uniform against a sample of Sisko's DNA, to check for allergies or other reactions.

"Hmmm. Captain, putting aside intense trauma and the like, how do young people handle situations with very good or very bad results?"

"I suppose-that they like to talk about it. Your first date, or the first time your face gets slapped. Taking your bike up that large hill or falling off of it. Your wedding day, or how they left you at the altar."

Garak packaged up the new uniform.

"Then that is why Red Squad was secreted away. I'd wager that they were talking about their 'prank', likely to good audience response. What could Starfleet do? Expelling them would only give them more time and now incentive to say how a group of overstuffed kids nearly brought down one of the great powers. So instead, they are rewarded. Out of sight, out of mind, and when they return, people would want them to talk about Valiant and their trip-not the coup."

_**5**_

Ben thanked Garak and left. Back up in Operations, Sisko saw all the Starfleet officers standing at attention. A few Klingons were in evidence, staring at Sisko's office, as though in wonder.

"Old Man?"

"Benjamin, you have a visitor."

"Dax, tell everyone to stand down. This looks like a cadet review."

"That's because every officer in here now feels like a cadet once again. Your call got some results."

Sisko walked into his office, and there saw a man, who, as a child and then as a young man, had known seven of the greatest legends of Starfleet history. He didn't quite look over a century, and the traces of the great one's profile were easy to make out in his face. The only aid he used in walking was an exquisitely carved African spirit-staff, an inheritance from one of those legends. The voice was also eerily reminiscent of the history tapes. His moustache detracted from the eerie resemblance not at all.

"Captain Sisko, I'll be running the tribunal. And I offer you this guarantee. Even in the worst case, your Ensign Nog will spend no more than a year in Auckland. This thing has been out of hand for far too long, and I'm acting to end it."

That this man was running things made Sisko believe that it would all be fair and above board. But that Starfleet had sent a member of one of its first families also reinforced that Nog was in trouble, for they were taking it all very, very seriously.

"Welcome to Deep Space Nine, Professor Kirk."


	4. Part Three

Part Three

_**1**_

Personal Journal, Captain Benjamin Sisko

_A great man has come aboard Deep Space Nine. A man who has earned all his own glory, and would be a Federation legend regardless of his heritage. He has done the hard work of trying to extend that fragile bubble of Paradise out from Earth to the entire quadrant. Unlike many in his position, he has always seemed to understand the realities of the harsher parts of our civilization. Again, from his overcoming of disabilities as a boy to his victories in the first Cardassian conflict, he has earned all his own glory._

_ But he knows, as does almost everyone else, that it is the light from the reflected glory he stands in that truly defines his life, from the time he was a small orphaned boy envied by billions, to now, when he has survived almost all those he is still regularly questioned about._

*Did he really say that Russia invented everything?*

*Was she as beautiful and patient as they say?*

*Did he become impatient, awaiting his own command?*

*Did he really pull off all that many miracles?*

*Did he fight with the other two out of frustration or love?*

*What was he like after he..came back?*

_Then comes the one that trumps them all, in life, death, rebirth or what have you. A question that, in some form, he will likely be asked, even on his dying day._

*What was he really like?*

_It is a question I intend to ask him, while he's here. And I met the man. But Admiral Peter Claudius Kirk, Mostly Retired, is not here to make small talk of the legends he traveled with as a child. Nor is he here to at last accept the Bajora Medallion Of Peace. After all these years, I am told he is still bitter about being forced to withdraw from Bajor sector, thus finalizing Cardassia's long-term occupation plans. But Gul Telmak had a Lucifer cannon aimed at Bajor's largest continent, and he was never noted for his reluctance to use such weaponry. Yet when Telmak mentioned in that uniquely Cardassian way the possibility that the cannon could one day be aimed at Vulcan or Earth, then Captain Kirk ordered it destroyed in three shots. Then he withdrew, owing to the alternative firepower still aimed at Bajor. It was decades again before the Cardassians so much as breathed on Federation territory. The Bajorans, who know only too well how little reluctance all Cardassian Guls have for laying waste a world, said that Peter Kirk bought them the fifty years they needed to be free. They once saw his withdrawal differently. He still does. _

_ I can only hope he sees Nog's judgment differently, as well._

_**2**_

Captain Sisko rounded the corner and at last found Professor Kirk, a man looking very good for the age his uncle hadn't reached. Before him were a gaggle of children including Molly O'Brien, all lost in the tale he told of a golden age.

"So Kang agreed with my uncle-let's just laugh the monster out of here. However we feel about each other, let it be honest and not some crude trick to amuse a cowardly entity, is what Kang said. So together they laughed, and laughed, and the monster left all upset, because monsters hate being laughed at. It takes their power away."

Molly raised her hand.

"But where were you, Professor? Did you get hurt when everybody was fighting?"

Kirk shook his finger in the air.

"No, Mister O'Brien. I wasn't on the Enterprise at all. I was on Earth, living with my grandma. See, back then, kids weren't allowed aboard starships. I spent a month there, after my parents got sick and had to go to Heaven. But I couldn't live there."

Molly apparently really liked being called 'Mister' like her Daddy, but her smile fell away in an objection.

"That's dumb! Your uncle was neat, but he should have let you stay. I lived aboard the Enterprise, before it got blown up."

Kirk heard quick muttered evidence that many of the children apparently held the same opinion.

"Well, my uncle Jim wasn't being mean. He loved me, and he wanted me to be safe on Earth, where no one gets hurt or killed or kidnapped, and no one just disappears *poof* in the middle of the night."

Sisko became concerned. This could end up scaring the children.

"Sometimes, a starship could be a very dangerous place. In fact, some people I met during my month aboard the Enterprise didn't make it back when the ship returned. So, see? I wasn't with him. But I was where my uncle needed me to be. When I was older and ready, he took me aboard his ship, and we had all kinds of adventures together."

One boy popped up and asked a hurried question.

"Did you see any space-dragons?"

Kirk seemed to be laughing to himself as he shrugged.

"Just one. And he was a real stupid-head. Well-heads, actually. He had three of them."

_**3**_

Sisko didn't fully get what he correctly took as an inside joke concerning the Admiral's strange past, but the children seemed amused as they dispersed. Sisko also heard amused laughter from behind him.

"Kang sure sounded different in that story."

"Well, Old Man, you can hardly blame the Professor for holding back on some of the nastier happenings during that incident."

"I couldn't, Benjamin. But Kang would have. And Mara always got excited when she talked about her confrontation with Chekov."

"Excited? Didn't he very nearly sexually assault her?"

Dax nodded.

"But he didn't. She never forgave him for that."

_**4**_

Sighing once again at the wall of Klingon culture, Sisko walked over to Kirk, to begin more comprehensible yet much more painful work.

"Admiral?"

Kirk looked up from his seat.

"I know, Captain. I was just trying to build up my optimism for our youth, prior to your son's testimony. I have a feeling it may take a hit, once I hear some of the first-hand details of the Valiant's final journey. Tell me, is he a willing witness?"

Kirk knew of course that Jake Sisko had not been designated as a hostile witness. Sisko understood his question's real aim.

"I did not have to persuade him to testify, sir. He wants the record on this cleared up, even if his friendship with Ensign Nog has encountered severe strain from the differences between them this has brought out."

"It happens in the best of friendships, Captain. You should have seen Jim and Spock go at it, right before the Gorkon Meeting. The argument of our lives can either break our ties or make them infinitely strong. I wish I could offer you more hope, there."

"It's good of you to even try, sir. Tell me-did you argue with your best friend in a like manner? I don't mean to intrude, but since I lost Cal Hudson, I find I ask it often enough."

Kirk nodded.

"I argue with my best friend every chance I get, Captain. Just as I have for the past three-quarters of a century. The fun is making up with her."

"How is Admiral Saavik?"

"Still herself. And very much intent on reminding Alynna Nechayev that it was the holes in her treaty that helped set up this war."

To say that Sisko was shocked was an understatement. While he had sometimes held similar thoughts, hearing a senior officer speak them out loud was a great surprise.

"I don't know that I agree with you entirely on that, sir. Yes, the DMZ treaty had its flaws, but it brokered a workable peace, at least for a time."

Kirk sighed.

"Please don't get me wrong-can I call you Benjamin? Alynna is a fine officer and a sharp diplomat. But on this treaty, she badly overreached. Worse, she will never in a billion years admit that she was wrong."

Once in the lift, Sisko queried the older man further.

"Ben is fine, sir. But how do you see her as being wrong in this?"

Kirk stopped the lift temporarily. He looked down.

"First, she allowed too much of the treaty to pivot solely on the intentions of the Cardassians, who at the very least have showed a historical tendency to creatively interpret what is and is not allowable. And before you say the obvious-Jim was answerable to other people. The military regime on Cardassia never was. Second, she did not obtain provisions for obvious and visible patrols of the DMZ border. That benefitted those who had something to hide. Third, she expected somehow that the Admirals' mantra of 'You Have Your Orders' would smooth every last ruffled feather in the Fleet. Lastly, she somehow expected colonists on the fringe, historically a hugely independent lot, to obey the treaty as if every last one of them was a plebe cadet at The Academy. The first mistake led to mayhem and mischief. The second led to fear that the Federation had abandoned the colonists. The third and fourth errors created The Maquis. The Maquis that became so dedicated to tossing Cardassia out of the DMZ, they failed to recognize that they had a possible victory in the provisional government. They helped destroy that government, inspiring Dukat to join with the Dominion. And that, Ben, is why I and my wife have issues with Admiral Nechayev."

Sisko started the lift again. Some of Kirk's angry words were hard to refute. When Sisko had been in a Dominion-created simulator, one of its unwitting villains had been Nechayev, another flawed treaty signed and ready to cause harm. But he had also seen the good her negotiating skills had done in the past, and so refused to speculate on the validity of that fantasy's judgment on her.

"Sir-"

"Its Pete, Ben. I'm not officially an Admiral anymore, and you are no raw cadet, being accused of racism for daring to suggest that the differences between humans and other species had to be recognized and faced up to, as well as celebrated."

Sisko felt honored and impressed that the man remembered him so well.

"Pete-your uncle oversaw one of the greatest colonial relocations before the DMZ Treaty, after his legendary first contact with the Gorn. Surely there was some resentment then."

Kirk stepped out of the lift, and both walked towards the conference room where the tribunal would be held.

"Hell, yes, there was resentment. So we told the Gorn to give us five years, if they wanted their territory back. Ironically, Cestus Three was the only place they gave up on, after their terradecimators changed the planet's climate. And we sent patrol ships out to wave at the Gorn.

And we sent the Starfleet Corps Of Engineers to help the colonists rebuild. And we asked the colonists where they might like to go. And we got a consensus from those colonists, and this was all done before a single treaty was signed. No top-down 'Just Obey' nonsense. No Starfleet officers feeling that they had to leave and betray their oath's letter, just to keep to its spirit. And no Gorn emboldened by our vagueness, either. We could easily have made a Maquis movement one century back, Ben. But we didn't."

Benjamin wanted to tell Peter Kirk that he would have to agree to disagree. But again, the problem came that he wasn't sure he disagreed with almost anything that had been said. Thankfully on that front, the packed conference room then opened before them, with Jake ready to be seated. Sisko immediately noted that Leeta held Nog's hand, and that Nog's stare was nearly blank. His sponsor hoped that the young Ferengi's future was not just as drained-looking.

_**5**_

Kirk placed a glance in Rom's direction. He smiled just a bit, as though to attempt to reassure the man. Little could have done that, then. Sisko saw that Quark wore a civilian outercoat Nog bought for him, bearing the Academy insignia. Not everyone on DS9 could be there, but it was fairly certain everyone was watching, especially as Professor Kirk began the hearing with a few words.

"Once, there was a young man who ascended rapidly and found himself in charge, or so he thought. A ship named Valiant was involved. But what power he had got to him, and ultimately proved his downfall when he could not see past himself any longer. That man's name was Gary Mitchell. His fate is known to most."

Some of the non-humans did ask among themselves about this reference. Martok seemed to be impressed when told how James Kirk killed his own maddened best friend. Quark shrugged at Nog's quick synopsis, while Rom shuddered a bit.

"Once there was a man who attempted to take on a foe far too large and powerful, and it took his ship apart as though it were nothing. That man's name was Matt Decker."

This time, everyone had heard the legend of the planet-killer. Sisko knew the incidents didn't exactly mesh, but liked how Kirk was setting things up and giving them much needed perspective.

Now, the Professor looked directly at Nog.

"Once, there was a man who made some serious mistakes, and faced some serious charges as a result. Try though he might, he could not convince his friends and family that he had meant well when he made these mistakes. Bitterly, he realized how his own actions and some small measure of bad fortune had made those mistakes inevitable, and made him realize that he had to change or lose the uniform he had come to hold very, very dear."

This time, he flashed a true smile at Nog as he finished.

"That man now calls this hearing to order. So relax, Ensign. Whatever happens will happen, and you are not unique in facing this troubled time."

Nog did not relax. But the color did seem to return to his face, and he released Leeta's now-sore hand.

"Thank you, Admiral. Sir."

Benjamin at first wondered why Kirk had gone so far out of his way to comfort Nog. It hit him only slowly. Both entered the Academy-a rough and tumble experience by any standard-with the burden of a legacy. It didn't matter that one had to be lived up to, and the other had to be lived down. People expected things of them for reasons having nothing to do with who they really were. Pride and Prejudice, he thought, almost amused by the internal pun. Kirk turned to Jake, seated and already sworn in by one of five legal counsels helping to guide the hearing.

_**6**_

"Mister Sisko, for the purposes of this inquiry, I am designating you as an outside expert on Starfleet and its affairs. You may not be of it, but from what I've learned, you certainly know of it. Since the facts in this case are largely known, your considered opinion will help us form what will be the final and definitive picture of the loss of the USS Valiant. Are you ready?"

Jake looked only at Kirk, never once at Nog.

"I am."

"Very well. My first question is, do you believe that you could have done anything to prevent the loss of the Valiant?"

Jake shook his head. The Admiral's designation and his right to do so may have been questionable, but Jake showed that it was perhaps not unfairly placed.

"No. I may as well have been unconscious or even comatose, for all the effect I had. As I had said in my article on this subject, my poorly-phrased objections to Cadet Watters' plans only helped to reinforce what the crew was committed to. I'm guessing that my well-phrased objections would have done pretty much the same thing."

"Mister Sisko, do you believe that Cadet Collins could have prevented the loss of the Valiant?"

"No. Part of the reason I was able to question Cadet Collins at all during the situation was that she was nearly disregarded by the others. She had little medical training, by her own admission. But she had none of the CMO's Power Of Removal. Again, I can only offer my guess, here, but if she did have that authority, Cadets Watters and Farris, again would have merely disregarded her."

Kirk changed tacks, shifting for the moment away from what seemed the next logical question.

"How did the ship run?"

"Very well. Like-like a well-oiled machine. However they came to those duties, they certainly knew them. In fact, I won't hesitate to repeat myself-up to a point, what Watters and Farris pulled off was a miracle. Their only fault-and I'm talking as someone who's done the exact same thing-is that they presumed that, because they knew so very much, that they must also know it all. I guess they were right so very often in the chances they took, one more must have seemed theirs for the taking."

"That you could see, did anyone question Cadet Watters on the plans to scan and then later to attack the behemoth Dominion warship?"

"On the plan to scan it? I don't think even I really objected. We-were like kids in a construction zone that's half-finished. Even those of us just watching were interested in seeing if they could pull off that crazy stunt. And they did."

"And on the plan to attack?"

"Well, I saved Watters and Farris the need to wait for one of their crew to object. Maybe some of them had objection on their faces, but I never heard it voiced. I think a lot of people who could have objected were probably stunned that the attack was even suggested, and so they didn't say anything."

"So both the scan and the attack were the will of the Valiant's cadet crew?"

"Yes. Or if it wasn't, it quickly became their will. Their unshakeable will."

Professor Kirk then lightly went right back to the subject more at hand.

"That was the will of the cadets. What of the will of the only commissioned officer on board that ship? Mister Sisko, could Ensign Nog have prevented the loss of the Valiant?"

There was a pause, perhaps a pause that went on just a little too long. Finally, Jake had an answer.

"No. He could have spoken up, but that is all he could have done."

Kirk shook his head.

"Mister Sisko, your answer is one or the other. Either he could have stopped the Valiant, or he could not have stopped it. If he could have spoken up, then your answer must be yes."

"No, Professor. You're wrong. You asked me if Nog could have stopped Valiant. His speaking up would not have stopped Valiant."

"Are you telling this inquiry that, as committed to their windmill as they were, the cadets would have ignored a commissioned Starfleet officer?"

Jake breathed in, then sighed just a bit.

"Sir, there is another reason why Nog would have been ignored. But through our legal counsel liaisons, Cadet Collins and I spoke prior to this. We agreed that it would be better if she gave that testimony, with my confirmation of it on the record when all was done."

"If you feel that Cadet Collins can make that reason more plain or more stark, Mister Sisko, then so be it. Yet let me repeat the question in a slightly different way : Could anyone, in your opinion, have gotten Cadet Watters, Cadet Farris, or their crew to stand down and go home?"

"I can think of four people who could have done that, Professor. They are my father, Captain Picard, Ambassador Spock, and your uncle. But you would have needed all four of them at the same time, issuing an unambiguous direct order and accompanied by an armed complement. Even then-Watters and his bunch would have put up a fight."

"Even then? Facing down that group of officers?"

"Yes, sir. Because they believed that the Dominion battleship was their clear ticket to calling those great men their peers. And when a fanatic sees Paradise ahead, you will always be hard-pressed to keep them from getting there at all costs."

"Last question, Mister Sisko. Where does Ensign Nog stand in your estimation, as regards the loss of the Valiant?"

"Ensign Nog was the only hero on a ship full of hero wannabes. There were reasons beyond wartime need and an old conspiracy that show why he was mustered forward when the so-called elite squadron was not."

Sisko was inwardly a bit disappointed when, upon leaving the witness chair, Jake did not sit with Nog and his family, glowing words aside. He still also avoided eye contact with the young man Ben Sisko hoped was still Jake's friend.

_**7**_

Cadet Collins was next to testify, looking neither as relaxed as Jake nor as tense as Nog. Her look was grim and sharp, almost as though she were channeling the spirit of the deceased Cadet Farris. But as her testimony would reveal, this supposed channeling was a utilitarian one, and not at all a tribute to her fallen acting XO. Kirk saw her be sworn in, and then asked his first question.

"Cadet, how is it that you came to serve in Red Squad?"

Collins gained a look of someone reflecting on an entire life, rather than a small part of it.

"I wasn't in the first cut when the names were announced, sir. At the time, I was grateful."

"Grateful, you say?"

"Aye, sir. I knew I could be one of the very topmost of the very best, if I did nothing but apply myself. But I wanted a social life, too. Not one of endless parties, mind you. But maybe one where I didn't have to refuse every single social invitation. It was only later I found out my father had filed a protest of my being passed over, despite my wishes. Yet even that wasn't enough to bring me in. There were a set amount of slots in Red Squad, and they were all filled. My average was just over a four and a half out of five, but I could also take in the occasional play, join with friends for a walk to T'Laq's Plomeek Pizza, or whatever. I wasn't going to be your Uncle, or your goddaughter, Captain Garret, at least anytime soon. But I felt would be an officer perhaps worthy of serving in any of the great crews."

Professor Kirk seemed pleased with this phrasing.

"A worthy enough goal, Cadet. One I wish more young people would seek."

Collins' tension lifted, just a bit, at the compliment.

"Thank you, Admiral. Well, I figured with everyone angling to be TNO, my attentions were better focused on honing what skills I had, and then letting chance and opportunity work in my favor."

Sisko briefly interrupted the proceedings.

"Admiral Kirk? Sir, my apologies. The term Cadet Collins used. TNO?"

Kirk sighed, though this was from a distaste for the term, not Sisko's questioning.

"TNO, Captain. A term used by many modern cadets who wish to be a Garth, a Picard, a Pike..or yourself. TNO. The Next One. As though destiny can be invited or coerced into tapping you on the shoulder. Efforts to be TNO dominate the lives of some of our best and brightest. Not merely as a dream, or goal. But as a stated purpose, and in some cases, an obsession that needs to be treated."

While Sisko digested that disturbing bit of trivia, Collins continued.

"It later came out that Cadet Watters' original Assistant Squad Leader refused to join the mission given to Red Squad by Admiral Leyton. The one that turned out to be part of his abortive coup attempt. Cadet Parker felt that what was asked of us involved an inherently unlawful order."

These were words which made Sisko mentally state ; "Thank God there was at least one.", as Collins kept on.

"When all was done, Parker was kicked out of Red Squad faster than you could blink. I had taken the trouble of raising my average that particular semester as close to a full five points as I could manage, with extra credit and such, so as to safeguard myself against a sophomore or junior grade slump. That, combined with my father's protest, got me the open slot on Red Squad. They all told me I was supposed to be happy, and I guess I was, figuring that fate had told me there was no slacking off. I could not have known what was in store."

Collins breathed in.

"This next part is punctuated by a number of times I saw things I should have spoken up about but didn't, or didn't speak up forcefully enough-or something. I'm not proud of it. Suffice it to say that my concepts of being in the very best squad and theirs didn't meet. Farris had replaced Parker, and she meant to prove that she belonged in that position."

The way of every new XO, thought both Kirk and Sisko.

"That I didn't meet up with Squad standards right off the bat wasn't so much of a shock as one particular criterion I ran up against. While I've never been lax in meeting the physical fitness regimen required of each cadet, my toning and overall appearance left something to be desired. I knew this implicitly. Cadet Farris made it explicit. If I wanted to stay in Red Squad, I'd have to come within 103% of my ideal weight, as opposed to the 106% required by the Academy in general, and the 102% required if you're on the Security track. Also, she suggested I'd better look like I met 101% in terms of my appearance-at all times."

Kirk stated what every officer and most present knew very well.

"Cadet, you are aware that discrimination based on one's physical appearance is very strongly prohibited by Federation Law, Starfleet regulations, and The Cadet Codex?"

"I am, sir. But Cadet Farris basically dared me to report her. She said that they could be taken to task for this policy. She then added that the violations that every cadet finds themselves committing at some point could be enforced with discretion, or to the strict letter. I took from this that even if I spoke up, a way would be found to later throw me out, one that the squad leaders would be well within their rights to utilize. So I did all the things, diet-wise, that I had to. I refused to take any sort of stimulants. Cadet Watters overrode Farris when I only achieved 104% of my ideal weight. He said to her that my having gotten with the program was more important than the actual numbers."

Professor Kirk nodded.

"Good cop, bad cop. Some things don't change."

Collins seemed embarrassed.

"I was thrown that it actually took someone telling me to get that. But see, it wasn't all hard-core. Some of it was just acclimation. Cadet Watters earned our respect by mainly asking the very best of us. The demanding he left to Cadet Farris, and only where it was necessary. They both rode us, but it wasn't a breaking ride. They knew their stuff, and they were learning more. Of course, we in the rank and file had some questions about who they were learning from."

"That being?"

"Uh, someone Cadet Watters called the last great Cadet leader, sir. Admiral Paris' nephew. Cadet Nicholas Locarno. It seems he reapplied after his absolute ban was lifted, following his expulsion owing to the Kolvoord Starburst Incident with Nova Squadron."

This twist, Sisko had not known of. During his Academy days, expulsion and a permanent absolute ban on re-application had been considered one and the same thing. He had heard that Locarno took responsibility for the tragic incident, but it sounded less noble than some had spoken of it, at least to him.

"But whatever mission he was given, Cadet Watters regarded it as a badge of pure honor. This led him to loudly defend Admiral Leyton and his actions to anyone who would listen. He began to sound a bit like, well, like a fascist. I think that Admiral Leyton's attempted coup was in the minds of some inextricably linked with Red Squad. To allow criticism of the coup was to his mind accepting a slander upon all of us, especially him as our leader. He must have talked once too often or too loudly, because one night after curfew we were one and all told to report to space dock, there to board the Valiant."

Kirk asked a question Sisko would have preferred not be asked publicly.

"And who gave the order to place you on board Valiant, Cadet?"

His voice had shifted, slightly. Decades seemed to fall off of it. So did the words 'Nephew Of'. The voice was that of a legend. The Legend. It was deliberate, Sisko realized. The Ultimate Captain by some accountings was asking a repentant Cadet a question, leaving her no potential for wiggle room, even if she were to want it.

"That would be Admiral Nechayev, sir. But I suppose I should add that nothing was said as to why we were being sent away. A lot of this is speculation that cropped up on board as we were on the more mundane portion of our cruise."

Sisko was on the verge of objecting. Yet whatever Kirk's agenda was, he pursued Nechayev no further in this.

"Were there any events of note during the cadet training cruise, prior to the attack?"

"No, sir. Cadet Watters did seem a bit depressed at times, and made reference to our 'exile'. But chiefly, he and we seemed caught up in the wonder of where we were. Why ever we were sent away, we were living inside a dream. I think we felt the only luckier young people in all of Starfleet history were either Wesley Crusher...or yourself, sir."

"I think both myself and Lieutenant Crusher appreciate just how fortunate we truly were, Cadet. Tell me, other than the tragic loss of the commissioned officers in the crew, was there anything untoward about the events which led to Cadet Watters assuming command?"

Collins seemed to light up. She smiled.

"He was brilliant. We were like panicked sheep, grazing with our heads down because that was the only direction we knew how to look. We thought it was over, and he refused to let it be. We were lost and alone, but it didn't matter. Our leader had come back. No one at the time even questioned why we had been entrusted with this mission. No one wanted to."

Kirk's next question struck like a quantum torpedo.

"Cadet, when did Watters begin using narcotic stimulants?"

"At first, sir, he only asked that he be given Vita-Stims. Then he changed his diet to nothing but high-energy foods. Ultimately, though, I was forced to tell him what anyone with the slightest medical knowledge knows. The Human body needs at least some sleep, and he was getting close to none."

"And that's when he asked for the stimulants?"

"Not directly, Admiral. He had Cadet Farris ask for a general requisition of them for those members of the crew who might need them. But while a number of us used hyper-caffeinated aspirin tablets, for example, this was the hard stuff she wanted. I objected."

Collins bit down.

"She then called me a Daddy's Girl who got in the Squad by the skin of her teeth and who was hanging by a thread or even less than that. She spoke of how we were chosen for this mission, and to hear her tone, I think she started to think that it was a power above Starfleet that had chosen us. I was sufficiently cowed that I gave in, and never really raised a peep about it, ever again. I did swear never to mix up a so-called 'genetic cocktail' for him or anyone else. No way was I going to sink so low as to alter their DNA."

In Sickbay, watching on monitors, Julian Bashir fought off something of a chill at those words.

"How rapidly did Watters become-well, let's say-less lucid and coherent than he had been?"

"I noticed it right away, sir. Despite the supposed urgency of our mission, Cadet Watters began to order us to interdict almost every Dominion ship we ran across. That was how we became damaged, and why we required the expertise of someone like Ensign Nog."

Kirk asked one more question on this specific subject.

"And Cadet Farris? Was she taking the same level and type of stimulants?"

"Not-directly, sir."

"Explain, Cadet."

"Do I have to?"

Kirk looked a mixture of annoyed and confused.

"No, sir. Its-awkward. Cadet Farris was absolutely devoted to the man she saw as her Captain. So devoted-she decided that part of her duty was to provide him with-special services."

"And the nature of these services had her taking the same stimulants?"

Collins' face turned beet-red.

"One of these services may in fact have caused her to ingest these stimulants in a second-hand manner, Admiral."

"And this service was-"

"Of an intimate but non-reproductive nature, sir. Meant to relieve his tension."

The eyes of everyone in the room went wide soon after. Small bits of laughter were heard. The Ferengi present spoke among themselves. Quark nodded.

"Finally. This hearing was getting a bit dry."

Nog looked down.

"Ohhh. I think that I sat in that chair. Ugh."

Rom looked at Leeta.

"We have to talk."

Kirk raised his hand to quiet things. He nodded.

"That part of your testimony is known and understood, Cadet. No more need be said on it. Please. Now, if you would conclude by speaking on the subject that Mister Sisko deferred to you."

"I will, sir. The last reason that Ensign Nog would have had no success in removing Cadet Watters was the most disturbing of all, at least to my mind. You see, many of the crew, as well as Farris and Watters, had no respect for him at all. They nearly held him in contempt, though they kept this well-disguised when speaking to his face."

"They didn't consider him to be a skilled engineer?"

"No, sir. They did consider him to be skilled and useful. It's just that-well, juiced up as they were, reason tends to be the first casualty. So it was that while they found his skills useful, in private, well past even his considerable earshot, many if not most of Red Squad considered Nog himself to be-an undesirable presence."

Now Collins did look at Nog, with sympathy in her eyes. Jake almost did, but caught himself in time. Nog seemed to silently mouthing the word, 'No'.

"And why, reasoned or not, did they feel this way, Cadet?"

"Because he is a Ferengi, sir. While Nog worked himself half to death getting our little suicide mission going, the sound dampeners went on wherever he wasn't. Lobe jokes, gender custom remarks, and other things I'd just as soon not mention. Even the non-Humans threw in. I think that hearing all this about a man who was helping us made me talk to Jake more than I would have. But I said nothing. Because I was loyal to Red Squad, I said nothing. Because I thought maybe everyone would sober up when the mission was over, I said nothing. Finally, I said nothing because I knew the only people they all held in greater contempt were Jake and myself. When I first got out of the escape pod, a wave of survivor's guilt had me still defending Cadet Watters. Now, I'm no longer sure I can even defend any of my own actions. I'm not even sure I want to remain in Starfleet, or if I'm fit to."

"Cadet, you are dismissed. And please consider that last decision very, very carefully. I'd rather not lose a cadet who can honestly tell the others it's not all this grand romantic cosmic adventure."

"That much I can do, sir. And Thank You."

Nog was seated at last, and any improvement he had shown earlier had faded with the news that the leaders he had given his misplaced faith had not ever really counted him as one of them. Sisko knew and others present correctly felt that Professor Kirk had saved his toughest questions for the young officer.


	5. Part Four

Part Four

_**1**_

Sisko was relieved that Kirk was not pressing his apparent anti-Nechayev bias any further than he had. He had been contemplating interrupting the proceedings if the older man did it again in public. Yes, she tended to address the captains under her like she was talking to Academy Midshipmen, but that was her right, and part of what they had all signed on for. Yes, the DMZ Treaty's flaws were one of the few things he and Picard could ever really agree on, but given the typical Cardassian negotiating stance, the only things they could have seen really being added to it were some less vague enforcement mechanisms between the two powers. Ben had learned the hard way about the cultural depths of Cardassian acquisitiveness, and their tendency to view even a signed deal as a work in progress. Sharp as he had been to the end, even Bareil had been hard-pressed to keep up with his Cardassian counterpart, to say nothing of the Kai.

"Maybe we could marry her off with Dukat."

Looking around to be certain that no one had overheard such a foolish statement, Sisko saw Kirk begin his questioning. This was where it all led to, and where it could all end, if Nog played it wrong, or if Kirk had already decided his fate beforehand.

"Ensign, let's start with the most basic question. In your mind, why was the USS Valiant lost and why is its crew of highly talented cadets almost all dead?"

While it would seem and perhaps be bigoted to say out loud, Sisko swore that he never saw Nog look more Human. He was then and there a young officer in a very bad place, and only his own actions could get him out of it.

"A series of very bad choices, sir. From Admiral Leyton down to myself, a series of very bad choices. The Valiant was already lost when Cadet Watters refused to do the nearly unthinkable and refuse Admiral Leyton's request. From start to finish, everyone could have stopped it, but it would have required doing what no one could contemplate doing, at that particular moment."

Professor Kirk looked at some notes on his PADD.

"For the purposes of this investigation, Ensign, I felt compelled to take the somewhat untoward step of asking around about statements you've made, concerning the incident in question. I must say, rather than the repentant and conciliatory tone you've just used, the accounts speak of you defending Captain Watters and all aspects of his command and assigned mission. With not a little stridency in your voice as you did this."

Nog was careful in wording, but corrected the much older officer.

"Admiral? He undertook that mission without authorization. And it was Cadet, not Captain, Watters."

Kirk smiled, a wily smile that again spoke to Sisko of another Kirk.

"I know all that, Ensign. I just wanted to see if you did."

Nog realized that, far from upsetting a superior of some reputation by his correction, he had in fact passed a crucial, if impromptu, test of what he had learned. He silently hoped that it would be enough to save him. In the audience area, Rom fretted a bit.

"Brother? What if this man is going to base Nog's fate all on these silly word-games? Hu-mon phrasing is sometimes horribly convoluted."

Quark seemed not to be so worried.

"If you weren't an idiot in a state of blind panic, you'd realize the old man is offering him an out. All Nog has to do is say he's wrong in the right ways, and this mess can be done with. But he is wily. Even I almost didn't catch the mistake, except as an old man's memory maybe going on him. He could be setting the kid up. Though Nog's done that pretty well himself, so far."

Leeta shook her head rather firmly.

"That man could have chosen to be the liberator of a mostly dead Bajor. Instead he pulled back, and gave us a chance to live and endure. He'll give Nog that chance. He just has to take it. But he still only gets that others think he did wrong. He has to get that for himself."

_**2**_

As Worf came off one duty shift, he sat by Jadzia, soon to leave for one.

"How goes it?"

Dax looked over at the Professor.

"Curzon once called him a little boy trying to step into Size 25 boots and doing the damndest job of coping with it he had ever seen in an heir to a legend. But he'll task Nog, before this is done. I just hope Nog takes whatever he has coming well."

"He will. It is one thing to have those lobes. But mostly, the boy knows how to use them to listen. Besides, I took Kirk's exobiology final. I was forced to give an oral recitation of how science can be used to guess out an unknown planet's entire history using merely long-range sensor scans. I ended it by concluding that this was impossible. It was that admission that earned me my passing grade. The Professor respects those who learn their lessons. That is-if their own stridency does not keep them from that learning, as it nearly did me."

Jadzia chuckled.

"Vous, Monsieur Worf?"

_**3**_

Kirk had another question at the ready, its seemingly direct aim actually being multi-directional, to say the least.

"Mister Nog, let me be very specific. Why did you not relieve Cadet Watters of acting command?"

Nog gave his first answer.

"Sir, there was already an existing command structure. I felt perhaps that violating it would have disrupted the ship's smooth functioning."

Kirk disallowed this.

"It was an emergency command structure, set up by people who did not yet hold even the rank of Crewman. You are a commissioned officer. So I ask again : Why did you not relieve Cadet Watters of acting command?"

Nog tried again, not realizing that, far from leaving the spot he found himself in, he was running in place with deep mud below him.

"Sir, Cadet Watters said that the scanning mission, at least, had been authorized by the Valiant's fallen original commanding officer."

Sisko felt that, if Kirk had been attempting to channel his father's brother before this, he now seemed to be calling on his uncle's other brother-or more precisely, that nigh-unkillable intellect that had been like James Kirk's brother.

"Your reasoning is still flawed. No Starfleet officer would hand a top-secret mission off to a crew of even the very brightest and sharpest cadets. If he actually did this, it was likely thought of in a dying fog. You could have at least requested to see the mission parameters and the authorization protocols. Even as an outsider to their command structure, you were at least technically a peer to Watters, if not his superior. A peer may and should make such a request, albeit tactfully. So again, Ensign Nog : Why did you not relieve Cadet Watters of acting command?"

Nog spoke a bit more cautiously now, but still seemed ignorant of how poorly he stood.

"Sir, there was reason to believe that the mission could have succeeded. In fact, there was every reason to believe we could permanently remove this battleship, a grave threat to the Federation and the entire quadrant. We had the time, the means and the opportunity to strike. Doesn't that count for something?"

"No, Ensign. It counts for nothing. Your opportunity was illusory, for any number of reasons that we may never know. You would have had the means using a seasoned and less impatient crew that didn't have to guess at the true capabilities of a Defiant-class. As for the time? May I ask how your grandmother is doing, Ensign?"

Nog didn't get this one, and neither did Sisko. But Quark did. He, after all, ended up paying the late delivery fee.

"My Moogie, sir? She's fine. Heh. She's something of a rebel on Ferenginar. She-well, she wears-"

He whispered.

"-clothes."

Kirk nodded.

"Bully for her, Ensign. So, is she dating anyone?"

If Kirk's verbal badgering of Nechayev had Sisko feeling he may have to halt the proceedings, Ben had no idea how to stop this very strange tangent the Professor was now on.

"Sir-my Moogie is seeing Grand Nagus Zek. That's well known."

"Great. Can you deliver a message from me to him?"

"Sir, of course I can deliver a message for you. I can always deliver a message to the Nagus."

Kirk looked at him.

"Then why didn't you? That was your assignment before Valiant, I believe. The question once more : Why did you not relieve Cadet Watters of acting command?"

This time, no channeling was involved. One troubled cadet was asking another to explain himself, and to cut through the nonsense and excuses, knowing them all too well and having no more patience for it in another than he could afford to allow for himself. Nog, whose explanations at their best had verve and inspiration, and at their worst sounded like a cornered used-shuttle salesman trying to get out of an explicitly-worded warranty, was trapped. Sisko prayed he was smart enough to see it.

"Because I allowed myself to become deaf, dumb and blind in exchange for an adventure, sir. Because I suspended my sense of disbelief and my common sense in general, like I was reading a story or acting in a holonovel. Because I thought I was living in a storybook fable. Because I wanted to be 'First Teen In Space' or 'The Farmboy Messiah'. Because I forgot that, even in those old stories, Mary Sue Johnson died at the end, leaving the crew that loved her directionless. Because I forgot that Luke Skywalker lost his hand and then found out his revered elders were mostly failures. Because I forgot that life isn't a story, and legends aren't built in one shot into a lucky spot. Because this war is complicated and messy, and I wanted to be part of something simple and clean."

Nog kept his voice, but it could still be heard breaking as he kept on.

"Because I forgot the universal tenets of deal-making that transcend even the ROA, that if what is proposed sounds too good to be true, it likely is just that. Because I turned my back on those things and people that I hold dear for the false chance to be a part of something I couldn't before. You can ask Jake and my father. It's what I tend to do."

Rom winced, as though hearing something spoken of that should not have been. Jake's impassive gaze softened for the first time, but he still did not look directly at Nog as he painfully kept on.

"You want to know why I failed to relieve Cadet Watters of acting command, sir? It's because I wanted and needed him to be for real, and acting against him was something that, on several levels, just wasn't in me at that time. That is why I failed, and that is why I will soon lose this uniform I have come to treasure more than a station filled to bursting with Latinum."

Quark's eyes nearly rolled out of their sockets, at that. Nog's own eyes seemed near to tearing. Professor Kirk chose not to wait for certain formalities.

_**4**_

"One of the fears people have when an outsider comes in to judge one of their own is that this supposedly august figure has already made up their mind, making the proceedings irrelevant. Well, people, have no fear. For my mind was made up long before I got here."

Most did not gasp or show an obvious reaction. Yet the words had to sting, for the implication they gave. Kirk continued.

"Once upon a time, Dereliction Of Duty, while always being a serious charge, did not quite rise to the level of treason or cowardice. Then, we finally started doing a much better job making our cadets aware of what was and was not expected of them, and so that charge became rarer and thereby more unthinkable when it was finally brought, and the attendant consequences made more severe as a result. The hellfire that came down on Ron Tracey a century back was as much for not reasoning out a way to help his crew as his gross violations of the Prime Directive. Like Cadet Watters, he was so focused on his ticket to immortality, he never conducted the more advanced scans that could have saved his people."

Kirk then did something he was known to be sparing about, at least in public.

"My uncle once told me that a Captain must be able to see past himself. For what lies past himself is his crew, his ship, and his mission. Commander Uhura then gave him a light glare, at which point he corrected his statement to a gender-neutral one."

The chuckles were light, but the humor welcomed when things were so tense.

"Since Dereliction Of Duty is sometimes as situational a charge as it is a simple yes or no question, I feel that I must factor in to my considerations the time, place, setting and atmosphere of the incident in question. I therefore find the following : Any serious effort on Mister Nog's part to unseat Cadet Watters would have landed him in the brig, thus not enabling him to effect the rescue of Cadet Collins and Mister Sisko, as well as himself. Had he not been so able, we would not now know of the Valiant's fate, and this admittedly unorthodox tribunal would never have been called."

Rom's hands clasped together, as though in prayer. The prayer was answered with a resounding Yes.

"Therefore I find that Ensign Nog's behavior in this matter, while at times troubling and questionable, in no way rises to the several standards necessary to bring charges of Dereliction Of Duty. But understand, Mister Nog. You did fail in this. You had a civilian as your charge, and you failed to act to remove him from a war zone with all haste. You were the commissioned officer, and you failed to take command away from a bunch of cadets. You were the engineer, yet you failed to make the crew aware of the precautions they should undertake, should their gambit fail. All this will be noted on your record. It will be up to you whether or not this note is one that holds you back or recommends you for odd and untoward missions in the eyes of your future commanding officers."

Rom sat and openly wept as his brother and his wife each took a hand and squeezed it. Yet Kirk was not finished.

"Because understand, you will encounter more odd, off-putting and bizarre situations involving a command gone wrong. Remember well the urban legend of the ship that encountered a savage xenomorphic life form, only to find their efforts to kill it thwarted by secret orders given to a decidedly pre-Soongian synthetic. Its orders were unlawful. Cadet Watters' orders were unlawful. Garth Of Izar's orders were unlawful. I'm certain someone could argue, though they would not go unchallenged in me by this, that the seven greatest people I've ever known gave unlawful orders. It happens. And when it does, it is not just your right to challenge them. It is your duty. It is not an intellectual affectation to cry out, No, This Thing Is Wrong And I Will Not Do It."

Kirk seemed to calm down just a bit from his nearly evangelical fervor.

"I am not urging a show of mass disobedience. I likely never would, and certainly not ever in a time of war. Nor am I urging everyone to judge all the orders they're given. That's not how things are done in a hierarchical structure. So what am I urging? I'm urging every officer here to remember what the man once said about supposedly obscene imagery : It is impossible to render an exact definition, but you'll know it when you see it. You don't need to be on guard for unlawful orders. If you choose not to turn off the brain that you were given, they will stand out like dirt on a glass window made of blue crystal at sunrise. You will know them. What happens after you figure it out will be your choice. As it always is."

The part that Nog still dreaded now began.

"Ensign, had this somehow happened in the Edenic peacetime we enjoyed only a decade ago, I might have taken that uniform from you, or at the very least seen you in a year in Auckland, if not Tantalus."

That one widened a few eyes before he continued.

"Had this happened after the first major Borg incursion, I would have had you reduced in rank to Crewman, albeit with possible restoration in rank purely left to Captain Sisko's discretion."

Again, Sisko appreciated Kirk's talent for building up to his point.

"Had this happened as we approached open war with the Dominion, I might well have canceled your forward muster, and directed that you serve the remainder of your time at the Academy."

Kirk nodded grimly.

"But now we are at war. Not an incursion, or a border dispute, or the annulment of a treaty. A war the likes of which we have never seen before, even to the Romulan and Klingon conflicts. You were right, Mister Nog. This is a dirty thing, this latest war to end all wars. It got to Watters, and it got to Farris, and it got to a man I still remember as Cadet 'Straight-Arrow' Leyton. It got to you, and it's gotten to me. You can ask my wife, Admiral Saavik, and you can ask my friend, Operations Chief Admiral Nechayev."

Sisko couldn't help but catch that. How could the Professor be that Janus-faced?

"But *it got to me* is about as useful an excuse for an officer as *We're desperate* is for a planet with a need. Through tough diplomacy, people like Alynna Nechayev and Ed Jellico have made people as diverse as the Aldeans, the Ventaxians, the Kes-Prytt, The T'Lani-Kellerun Alliance, the Argrathi and others aware that bad relations with the Federation, while they may not lead to war, can make them victims of a very, very cold shoulder. So as it is for planets, so do officers need some tough love to see that even total war, dirty as it gets, is not an excuse for every wrong under the stars. In that light, Ensign Nog, hear now your punishment."

Poor Rom appeared to be on the worst kind of roller-coaster. His joyful face again shifted at these words.

"I find that Cadet Watters and Cadet Farris bear the brunt of the responsibility for the Valiant's loss, the remainder being dispersed among all other cadets on board. Cadet Collins has been cooperative nearly from the start, and is therefore spared any punishment. You, Ensign, were the ranking officer on board, the extenuating circumstances aside. So I hereby direct you, at a time of Captain Sisko's choosing, to return to Starfleet Academy, there to provide a series of lectures on the nature of odd and untoward command situations and lawful versus unlawful orders. These lectures will be bound to holovid and made a part of the Academy Archives, to provide future generations of cadets with a guide to what is and is not allowable. I may find that the well-spoken, outspoken parents of the cadet crew of the Valiant will want to know why their late children have been labeled as wrongdoers. And I will reply thus : They are labeled as wrongdoers, because they did wrong, and as a result, are lost to us all. My Uncle had to deal with it, as regarded my cousin, David Marcus. Now so will you."

While most doubted Kirk would be quite that harsh with a grieving parent, few doubted the necessity of the basic sentiment. They had all taken an oath, and oaths sometimes require a price, one often unspecified until it is called in.

"Lastly, I will direct that the James T. Kirk Excellence In Cadets Award be retooled back to reward individual achievement. Somehow, the same Federation that hates Eugenics and the Super-Men it created keeps asking its Starfleet to create super-cadets. No more. There will always be standout cadets, and stand-out cadet squads. But if I have my way, and I have been assured that I will, then no cadet will ever again be told that they are famous for being famous. The joke goes nowadays that a group of Starfleet psychologists arrived in San Francisco to do a symposium on the irredeemably insane. But the study groups came up empty, because all the Admirals were on Risa, and all the cadets were in Acapulco on Spring Break. Well, it's time we pulled the teeth from that joke and make it an untrue relic of a time now past. And we will start where we always start, from where we all started, and are usually most loathe to reform : Starfleet Academy itself."

Sisko saw Nog as the realization that he'd gotten off easy finally sank in. But in a way, he really hadn't. Kirk had all but demanded Nog use the experience to give Starfleet a better officer, and Ben was determined to see that Nog did just that. Kirk finished up.

"The man known eternally as *Yeah, that's HIS nephew* now calls this hearing to a close. Ensign Nog?"

The old man's piercing eyes met the still-nervous eyes of the recent cadet.

"Yes, sir?"

"Go to your father. He looks like he needs a hug. And never make me have to give that harsh speech to him. Am I understood?"

"You-are known and-understood, sir!"

"Dismissed, Mister Nog."

_**5**_

Nog then ran like a rocket to his family. Leeta, who had worn a confident face throughout, now held her stepson in a bear-hug. Quark pshawed the whole thing, but could be spotted wiping his eyes as he turned away. In succession, nearly one and all walked over to congratulate Nog on his good fortune and lesson learned. But one was noticeably absent. Nog saw Jake standing back, as though regarding things with a careful eye. Nog reached out.

"Jake?"

Jake Sisko did not cross the short distance between them. Instead, he increased it, perhaps immeasurably.

"I'm glad you're not going to prison, Ensign."

Nog felt his legs start to vanish beneath him as Jake walked towards the door to exit the room, with not another word from him or even a backward glance. Ben stepped in front of him before he could.

"Jake-go to him."

Jake looked at his father, not showing anger but looking almost noncommittal.

"Is that an order?"

"No, but-you should go to him."

That look emerged again.

"Dad, this is for the best. For both of us. I see that now. I have a story to write. I'll see you back in your quarters."

The ice in his son's voice nearly had Ben checking the room for signs it had been opened to vacuum. Maybe this wasn't all over just yet, he reasoned. The people Nog left with looked in a celebratory mood. Ensign Nog himself did not. Unable to change all that for now, Sisko waited for the room to empty and then turned to-and turned on-Admiral Peter Kirk.

_**6**_

"Sir, about Admiral Nechayev-"

"The old man's something of a hypocrite, isn't he, Ben?"

More than a bit thrown, Sisko sat down.

"Pete-what the hell's going on here?"

Kirk produced a single-document storage device, meant for matters of the highest classification. After extensive and at times redundant checks on multiple levels, it unencrypted and Kirk handed it to Sisko. Ben was startled, to say the least.

"And she approved this?"

Kirk chuckled.

"Alynna and I at times have some deeply felt, very profound disagreements. When I want to piss her off, I talk flaws on the DMZ Treaty and to pay me back, she talks retirement and age. But that little tantrum I threw earlier? That was purely for the consumption of those people who, shall we say, are less full-blooded than they might appear otherwise. We both agree that this is desirable as well as necessary. It will all go forward at your signal. What do you say, Ben? Do we surprise them, maybe just this once?"

Sisko considered what was presented to him. He didn't take long to do so.

_**7**_

In what was soon to be their former shared quarters, Nog had left his own party to make a desperate plea.

"You don't need to do this."

Jake already had taken away most of his things.

"I think that I do. Nog, we always end up at this point. We always will. Since the day we met, you've been telling me and telling me. Well, I finally listened. This hu-mon is going away."

"Jake, I know what I behaved like on the Valiant. And I'm sorry. But to end our friendship based on one bad incident? You've had your moments, you know."

"I know. Nog, it's like I wrote. I was no help on board the Valiant. I am grateful you came back for me, all other things aside. But I'm not doing this out of bitterness, and I'm not ending our friendship. I'm preserving it."

"You could've fooled me."

Jake finished his last box.

"If I leave now, and put some distance between us, we'll at least have some good times to look back on. But we've grown too far apart. This isn't relaxing versus laxity, or discipline versus art. Nog, you called me a liar. A lot. To a lot of people. Someday, I'll slip up and return the favor somehow. Eventually, we'll come to a parting so harsh, there will be nothing left of our friendship. Even the memories will be tarnished. This way, we keep what's best of it while acknowledging reality."

"I take it back. You're not a liar. You're a coward!"

Jake grabbed up his box.

"Yeah. I guess I am. It looks like I was also right. Be well, Ensign. Or maybe I should just tell you to go to..."

**Ensign Nog and Jake Sisko report to the Defiant-immediately.**

_**8**_

Jake rolled his eyes.

"An intervention."

Nog grabbed his own head.

"Thanks, sirs. Now our friendship will certainly be done for. Do we go?"

Jake shrugged.

"It's not like they'll stop if we don't."

The two angry young men were sure they were ready for anything and everything as they crossed the airlock into Defiant. What they got was what they did not expect. Admiral Kirk wore an ancient Admiral's maroon tunic, and all the officers were at battle stations, not admonishing them to remain friends or acting out helpful psych-games. Collins was there as well.

"Dad?"

"Jake, you have a story to finish telling. Nog-get to secondary weapons, ASAP!"

Sisko looked at Kirk, then smiled.

"We are going out. We are going to find that Dominion battleship. And we are going to complete the Valiant's last mission, and bring her low. Who's with me?"

One word filled the ship, no matter civilian, cadet, or semi-retired academic semi-legend.

"SIR!"

Kirk quietly left the Defiant after wishing the warriors well. Jake and Nog wondered openly about this.

"Dad, the Admiral's not coming with us?"

"Yes, sir—I thought he would. We could use a Kirk's luck."

Sisko shook his head.

"He has another part to play in this."

*_It's one I hope he survives_*, thought Sisko.

The ship went underway, and aboard Deep Space Nine, Peter Kirk was placed under arrest.


	6. Part Five

Part Five

_**1**_

Inside the O'Briens' quarters, a loving father once again found his heart ready to give out.

"That stupid old man! First he makes us wait in the Realm Of The Red Ledger before he gets around to exonerating my son, then he and Captain Sisko drag him off again, and for what? So they can go on the same damned fool mission that got him in trouble and also nearly got him killed! And then he doesn't even go on it? Where is he, anyway? I last saw him talking with that Romulan-the one with the stone-cutting gaze."

Busy till then with a bowl of honey butter popcorn, Garak looked up at these words.

"Admiral Kirk obviously suffers from classic Impostor's Syndrome. But he's no fool. In their occasional dealings, my father always regarded him as a worthy adversary. I'll lay odds, wherever he is, he's striking up some deal or other."

Miles looked out the window before responding. While he had promised the absent Keiko to avoid missions of opportunity, as opposed to vital or emergency missions, he wished he could be on the Defiant, then and there. He had reported Kirk's virtual vanishing to Sisko, and had been ordered not to speak of or discuss it. Likely Garak was on to something, but O'Brien's orders were clear, so he latched onto something else the current tailor had said.

"Tain had dealings with Admiral Kirk? Why?"

Garak half-smiled.

"It was, shall we say, a meeting of equals?"

Kira was the natural choice to oversee DS9 and Bajor while its Emissary sailed off into battle. Her questions echoed those of O'Brien's.

"Garak, that doesn't make any sense. Your father was head of The Obsidian Order-the secret intelligence service, as opposed to the more public one used to keep order. The Federation doesn't have an equivalent to that."

Garak had the replicator refill his bowl. He found he really liked that flavor of popcorn.

"Doctor Bashir might well say otherwise, Major."

Quark rolled his eyes. He prayed that Leeta's prayers for Nog would end soon, so she could come back and baby-sit her emotional wreck of a husband.

"Not another Section 31 story! I swear, ever since the Doctor was abducted, every day I get at least one fool who tries to get their S31 discount at the bar. I tell them-you want free drinks, talk to your bosses and make me disappear. Then they disappear."

Miles deliberately broke his gaze from the space outside.

"So Admiral Kirk runs Section 31, if there is one?"

Garak was downing some water, the result of too many dry kernels getting past him.

"He-ack-he...hold on...there. Supposedly, he once ran it. The story goes that he took the post after the loss of the Enterprise-C, to oversee avenging his goddaughter, Captain Garrett. He left it when he found that his agency may have had complicity in a certain starship's disastrous launch sometime about eighty years ago. Of course, these stories bounce around endlessly, and they tend to grow heads as they do."

Quark seemed less than impressed.

"So now he's sent everyone out to go avenging those idiotic kids? Is that all the man does, avenge things? He's not a Klingon, for pity's sake. Besides, I thought Admirals weren't expendable. They all appear on screens, and argue with Captain Sisko before telling him to go ahead and do what they know he's going to do, anyway."

Worf had bet Jadzia that she could not sit through an entire meal with Martok's wife Sirella without speaking out of turn, his revenge for all the arm-wrestling victories her superior leverage had brought her. The stream of invective Dax had given into meant that she had to remain at the station while Worf oversaw primary weapons on Defiant's current mission.

"Normally, you'd be right, Quark. But an aspect of this mission requires a senior Admiral's presence, at least in the nearby sectors. I can't go into more than that. Also, I hate this! My husband, my protégé, and a young man I held as a baby are all out on a mission that could mean I never even learn their exact fates."

Quark shrugged.

"So? Life is dangerous all over. You could probably die while praying in a shrine."

A very quick, very harsh glare from Kira made Quark follow up on that.

"Uhhh...but only if that should happen to be the will of the Prophets, of course."

Miles knew better than to allow his mind to keep wandering back to the Defiant, and so he chose to press Garak on one of his off-hand references.

"Did you or did you not just say that Section 31 was responsible for Captain Kirk's loss aboard the Enterprise-B?"

"Actually, Chief, I never said any such thing. I said that Admiral Kirk-if he truly were in charge of 31 at one time-resigned because there was talk of his agency's culpability in that matter. I looked at the available evidence. It's something I often do on a lark. Since I've been excluded for so long from all things Cardassian, studying other secretive intelligence operations helps pass the time."

"Uh-huh. So what did you find when you passed the time on that subject?"

Garak pushed away the popcorn. It was perhaps not entirely agreeing with his digestive tract.

"Mostly I came to the conclusion that all the talk was just that. That tragic and awkward launch had been what it appeared : an accident caused by unpreparedness. Yet, and this is the interesting part, the rumors of Section 31's complicity were likely started by the agency itself, and they were started quite deliberately."

Dax shook her head at hearing this.

"Why would they implicate themselves in something they were innocent of?"

Garak raised and shook his index finger in the air.

"Indeed. What would it gain them, claiming to be responsible for the tragic and pointless ultimate denouement to a great man's career? The answer is reputation. They would then be able to have people whisper '_Don't mess with Section 31-they're the ones who got rid of Kirk_.' Very effective. An incredibly complex, invaluable deception that requires almost no effort to put forward."

O'Brien snorted at the paranoid idea.

"A little too complex, you ask me. Where would you-or they-get that kind of idea from?"

Garak nodded.

"From your own history, Chief. If they did this, then they were merely following the example set by the Central Intelligence Agency in the ancient United States Of America, who allowed rumors to swirl for decades that they had killed one of that nation's presidents-an Irishman, like yourself, I believe."

"Kennedy?"

"Yes-that was his name. Oh, they were a bunch. Blind as a bat on outside threats, but terrific at managing internal ones. That whole Militia movement in their western states? Brilliant method of corralling and keeping tabs on all the most extreme malcontents-except for that one fellow in Oklahoma, I think it was. He fell outside the sensors, so to speak. Hmmm. Could Section 31 have done something similar, more recently-founding a rebel movement to which all the malcontents could be drawn to, then done away with?"

O'Brien sat down, his head hurting from the layered lunacy Garak was proposing. Rom set things back on track.

"The only conspiracy I'm concerned about is the one against my son. I know what's going on. They want to blame him for the Valiant, anyway. That's why he's with them, so they have a scapegoat again, and..."

While not exactly Starfleet's biggest booster, Kira cut Rom off.

"Rom, that's enough. Your brother's opinion aside, you're not stupid. You know full well your son took an oath-a verbal contract-and that he was in trouble because of actions he took, and actions he didn't take. That's not conspiracy. That is living up to your word, once given. Nog understands that, and so should you."

"I do! But I still don't want him to go to jail. That's what a parent does, right?"

Dax bit down before responding to this.

"Benjamin showed me some pre-Academy school records from the members of Red Squad. While mainly a very self-disciplined bunch, there was a pronounced tendency on their parents' parts to keep them from ever being punished by school or other civil authorities. And I mean ever, for any reason or action."

Quark stood and half-smiled.

"That's where it always begins, and that's where it always ends. I should have let Captain Sisko arrest Nog, back when Starfleet first got here. That's what really started this whole mess."

Rom walked out without a word or a look at his brother, who after a moment sighed and followed him. The small gathering dispersed as the attendants had to relieve their reliefs, so to speak. But those aboard Defiant did not once leave their thoughts.

_**2**_

Nog's innards were doing acrobatics. The gung-ho fervor had faded faster than it had before, as he reminded himself that once again, a single Defiant-class ship was aiming to take out a battleship many times its size and power, with the same overarching confidence. While the crew involved was infinitely more skilled, size and power were still size and power. Even had Admiral Kirk or his uncle had been there, and even if James Kirk were twenty times greater than his most extreme legends, that would do nothing to alter firepower and armor ratios. But just as he was about to descend into a blind panic, the very unreality of the situation spoke to him, and suggested a solution as familiar as his time at the Academy. He got up and walked over to Captain Sisko, who looked surprised to see this, to say the least.

"Ensign, why aren't you at your post?"

"It's alright, sir. I've figured it out."

Now Sisko really looked confused.

"What have you figured out, Mister Nog?"

Ahead of them, Worf was inputting a long series of codes from a PADD with an actual physical magno-lock. But Nog had his notion firmly set in his head, and all the realistic touches in creation weren't going to knock it out.

"Well, sir. Here we are, doing much the same thing that the Valiant did, before it was destroyed."

"True, Ensign-to an extent. What's your point?"

"Sir! I made a mistake, but I'm not that big a fool. After all that happened, and all I was told about how Cadet Watters did the wrong thing, I know where we really are."

"And that is?"

Nog chuckled.

"We're in one of my uncle's holosuites. Chief O'Brien probably rigged this up so it would seem even more realistic. He did a great job, too. This really feels like when the Defiant is under way. But I truly have learned my lesson about the Valiant. Sir-please discontinue this. It's not necessary anymore."

Sisko smiled, and nodded.

"Ensign Nog—resume your post."

"I understand, Captain. We're going to see the simulation through, then?"

Sisko motioned to his son.

"Jake-come here."

"Yeah, Dad?"

"Jake? Did you and Nog beam aboard the Defiant?"

"No. We walked in, through the docking bay."

Sisko nodded.

"Were either of you unconscious just before you joined us?"

"No. I haven't slept since the beginning of today's tribunal. I'm too wound up."

"Taken any pharmaceuticals?"

"Some Mochatageno blend coffee, but nothing harder."

"Ensign?"

"Errr-the same applies to me, Captain."

Ben shook his head.

"No beaming, no sleeping, and no drugs. Mister Nog, what does that tell you about our situation?"

Nog felt a bit light-headed as he responded.

"That this is no simulation. It's for real. We're really hunting the Dominion battleship."

_**3**_

Worf called out.

"No longer. We have found it. The described spot bears surface scarring from the Valiant's attempted strike, and sensors detect micro-sized fragments of ablative armor in its hull, such as is used in a Defiant-class ship."

As a shaky Nog sat back at his post, Captain Sisko received a nod from Worf, who had finally completed entering the codes from his list. Benjamin saw the behemoth enemy dreadnaught onscreen, large and growing larger. Bashir reviewed emergency medical procedures with Collins while Sisko said words that echoed ominously in Nog's worried mind.

"Thar she blows!"

Nog saw that the seeming flippancy was meant to ground him, but it was still unnerving. Why? Why such a hard-learned, painful lesson was was learned being refuted in the next breath was beyond him. His rattling at the tribunal behind him, he now felt he had a few good answers as to why Watters, however flawed he had been, was not an unlawful CO issuing unlawful orders, at least in the main. But that paled beside the basic lesson that had been driven home. Once the mission changed from getting home, or at the very least, once it changed from scanning to attacking, a defacto unlawful atmosphere had taken over, and Nog should have stepped up then and there.

"_Maybe they're all on hard stims. Because here we are again_."

Nog kept this well under his breath, but at the front of his mind. He wanted to have faith in those who had inspired and trained him, but they were making that exceedingly difficult, and not merely for himself. Jake spoke in low tones to his father.

"What kind of security restrictions am I under?"

"For the mission itself, the standard five days, for one aspect of our battle plans, till cessation of hostilities. For another-cessation plus five years."

"Five years?"

"Jake, I told you that access agreements have hidden pitfalls. You signed yours knowing that things like this could come up. The only plus is that you are less subject to arbitrary rulings on these matters. But is that really what's on your mind?"

The younger Sisko looked down, then back at the elder.

"I would never place you in the same category as Watters."

"I hope not. Though I do take my raktageno black. No mocha blends."

"Dad-I'm seeing a replay here that I'd really rather not go through. I see it enough in my nightmares."

"We are a cloaked ship."

"Whose engines are very, very powerful and sometimes work at cross purposes to that cloak."

Ben smiled.

"You really are a good reporter, you know that? But maybe those cross purposes work directly towards ours. You see, Mister Sisko, this plan was worked out by myself and Admirals Kirk and Nechayev, with the aid of some of our best-and some of our very strangest-planners."

Doctor Bashir took a moment, then made a guess.

"They've met my overly-enhanced friends. I'm surprised they'd be allowed within breathing room of our admiralty."

Sisko shrugged.

"Those 'advancement' clinics are an ongoing problem, Doctor. It's a resource that the Admiral has tapped before. Remind me to have him tell you about it all before he leaves DS9."

Worf announced what all knew was coming.

"Approaching point of no return. Doctor, your test?"

Joseph Sisko's wisdom during the Leyton Coup Attempt had been taken to heart. Rather than the blood tests which could and in some cases had been faked, Bashir now activated a device that emitted a burst of alpha waves that meant nothing to a solid, but would shake a changeling's mass into believing that, whatever their personal time limit for remaining in another form, it had been reached. It too was far from perfect, and testing outside Odo problematic, but so far, where it had been used, no sabotage had occurred.

Bashir himself was required to be tested by his staff before leaving, his own blood tagged with a harmless substance he was not to be made aware of, the lack of which when scanned would cause him to be locked out of all ship's systems. In turn, he was to come up with a random test beyond the alpha-emitters. In this case, he watched for the regularity of blood flow in each occupant. At least one individual was scanned twice.

"Captain. Let it be known that I certify, within the limits of my skills and equipment, that the USS Defiant enters this combat zone free of any shapeshifters."

Also, Nog thought fitfully, bereft of its common sense.

_**4**_

Back on DS9, Odo gave Kira and O'Brien welcome news that echoed Bashir's aboard the Defiant.

"None of those who are supposed to be in the expeditionary force aboard the Defiant are still on DS9. Neither I nor my staff have found any of their mortal remains or traces of their evaporated DNA. Three unauthorized transports occurred, none involving anything more than efforts by a certain tavern proprietor's alleged associates to hide their clumsy efforts at smuggling. The secondary scrambler that frustrates the so-called 'hyper-transporter' utilized both by the Dominion and their former associate, Gul Dukat, is, so the Chief informs me, in perfect working order. The station's defenses against dimensional incursion by the so-called Mirror World are also operational. Your Intendant counterpart, Major, will find herself beamed directly into an already-activated brig with a redundant steel door in front of the force field. In short, everyone who left was precisely who they seemed to be, and we scanned them thoroughly enough to ensure their identities when they come back."

Kira dismissed both the Constable and the Chief, since all had their own duties. But Odo stopped O'Brien before they parted.

"Chief, could I ask you a favor?"

"Sure. What do you need?"

The constable shook his head.

"It will sound utterly ridiculous. But Admiral Kirk asked me an interesting question, simply out of curiosity, and I realized I had no idea how to answer it."

"That question being?"

"Chief, how do you know that I'm Odo?"

O'Brien looked confused.

"Well-who else would you be?"

In a moment, Miles caught himself.

"Uhh-well, in order to impersonate you, another shapeshifter would have to kill you. And they would never do that."

"Bad answer, Chief. One, we don't know to what extent my killing another shapeshifter changed things. Oh, they may have punished me. But who can say that was all they'll ever do? Two, they wouldn't have to kill me. All they would have to do is keep me occupied, and they've done that before."

Odo sighed.

"If you and Doctor Bashir can leave Ancient Texas alone for about a week, I'd appreciate anything you can come up with. For someone in my position, not being able to truly verify my own identity to others is greatly unsettling."

Miles nodded.

"You got it, Constable. By the way, I may have evidence of illegal activities that will put Quark in a penal colony for a year."

Odo almost began to shake.

"Well, what is it? Does he know you have it?"

O'Brien smiled.

"There's one test at least. Even if they linked with you, no other changeling will ever be able to truly mimic your feelings about Quark."

Odo walked off, not certain if he was more annoyed by the humor or its possible accuracy.

_**5**_

Nog saw that something was throwing off his attempts to properly calibrate secondary weapons systems. When he saw what this something was, his vague doubts about this mission now made as solid as duranium. He turned to Sisko.

"Captain! We've been sabotaged."

"Define sabotaged, Mister Nog."

Please, the young Ferengi thought, let this be a dream, or at least a vicious prank.

"The engines' output is at 140% of the levels recommended for use while we are under cloak. The Dominion have to know we're here. Sir, I suggest we turn back."

"And are you willing to back up that suggestion, Ensign?"

Nog had to say it, lesson sim or doomed ship. He had to say it.

"I am, Captain. Even to the extent that I will have to ask you to give up your seat to Commander Worf, should your refuse to turn back. I'm not sure of anything, anymore, including where I stand legally, just for making that request. But I know now, as I did not before, that even the best-staffed Defiant-class cannot take down that behemoth alone."

Sisko stared at Nog for a moment.

"You are correct, Ensign. But I will ask you to resume your post, and trust that we already knew that, going in. I'm asking you to trust me, Nog. Do you?"

Nog resumed his duties with only a few more words.

"Secondary weapons systems stand ready, Captain."

"Excellent, Ensign. Commander Worf? Is the scan complete?"

"It is, Captain. And I am finding a most surprising detail about the Valiant's so-called 'weak spot' on the enemy vessel."

"Let me guess. Its bait, meant to draw enemy fire?"

"A good guess, Captain-but no. This entire scan is an elaborate deception. It cannot be trusted."

More than one head turned at that news.

"How is that, Mister Worf? How could they so thoroughly deflect a scan as to make it useless in battle?"

Worf punched up a display that he fed into a portion of the main viewscreen.

"In effect, they did not. The scan is a thorough, uncorrupted one. It is simply not a reading of the vessel we see before us."

Sisko began to nod.

"A trick worthy of what's-his-name. The Admiral's uncle."

Nog saw it quickly, as well. The readings taken were of a ship of similar size and make, but with systems placed very differently than on the genuine article. A false set of schematics was being constantly transmitted, meant to be misread by anyone who got too close. The crew of the Valiant, so anxious for a kill they could taste it, had never stood a chance of finding the battleship's theoretical weak spot. In effect, they had been trying to navigate the Badlands with a map of Earth's solar system.

"How could we not see?"

He allowed his eyes to close for half-a-second, once again knowing full well how they made themselves blind.

"Mister Nog, fire a spread of photon torpedoes. Target the weak spot indicated in the false scan."

"The false scan, Captain? And why not quantum torpedoes?"

"Ensign, your concerns are laudable and noted. But don't question me again. Fire the spread."

As Nog knew it might, the battleship shot down nearly every torpedo. The few that got through were no match for the leviathan's shields and armor.

"Sir, they have surely confirmed our presence with that."

"Ensign Nog is correct, Captain. We are being fired on."

As soon as Worf had said it, the ship rocked with enemy discharges.

"Commander Worf, drop cloak, and raise shields to maximum."

Again, Nog saw things with a clarity he cursed himself for not having or using aboard the Valiant. While Defiant was now in a better defensive and strategic position, this meant nothing against the giant enemy. Its remaining life might soon be measured in minutes, painful hours at best, as the terrific power of the battleship's Turbo-Polaron lasers was brought to bear. The professional crew would only buy them time, not victory. Then, the situation entered the realm of the Red Ledger.

"That's impossible."

"Don't tell me it's impossible, Ensign. Just tell me what it is."

"Captain-two more vessels of the same class of battleship are decloaking!"

Sisko seemed unsurprised as Worf confirmed this.

"I'm going to interpret this as meaning they've passed the prototype stage of development."

_**6**_

Quark was determined to break down an old brick wall.

"Go away, brother! I don't want to discuss it."

Quark turned to Rom's wife.

"Leeta, now would be a good time to use those brains I said you didn't have and let me deal with him."

The Bajoran sighed.

"Do you plan to call him an idiot?"

"No. Merely a stubborn fool."

"Oh. That's alright then. The first insult makes you vicious. That one just makes you a blind hypocrite. Forget it. Go tend your bar."

"Woman, you chose to marry into this psychological swamp we call a family. If you refuse to act like anything resembling a traditional Ferengi wife, would you at least respect the fact that I've known Rom a lot longer than you?"

Leeta wasn't budging.

"In case you haven't noticed, Rom is angry with you."

"And in case you haven't noticed, Rom is even angrier with Nog!"

That one, she was not at all prepared for.

"What are you talking about?"

It was Quark's turn to be unprepared. He looked at Rom.

"You haven't even told your own wife?"

"I've told her enough. This predates us by better than a decade, Leeta. I agreed not to ask about every last detail of your old life, because I trust you. So trust me."

Leeta folded her arms.

"Rom, if you're angry with your son-and Quark I do say if, because I've seen nothing of it till right now-then that's not just a detail. Well, the Mass Cleric knows me pretty well by now, so I'm headed back to the shrine."

Quark nodded.

"Pray for me, while you're at it. Because the last time I even broached this subject, it was followed a week later by my brother working with Zek's son to put me out an airlock. The time before that, he decked me and knocked out three of my points."

Leeta seized her husband by the shoulders.

"Rom, your brother is an arrogant lying sexist hypocritical bigot. But he loves you. Listen to him, and don't hit him so hard he loses teeth or consciousness. Promise?"

"Anything for you, my love."

Leeta left, with an eye of doubt on them both. Quark waved.

"Say hello to the Prophets. Mention my name. They know me."

Rom roared when the door was finished closing.

"Just what part of 'I don't want to talk about it' are you failing to understand, Quark?"

Quark sat down, indicating he was not going anywhere.

"The part that tells me why you, who of late has proven NOT to be the idiot I say you are, have somehow made yourself not see a connection so obvious, they wouldn't even pass muster in one of Bashir's spy holos!"

Rom calmed down, though he still seemed shaken.

"I can see it just fine. But Jake won't forgive it like I did."

Quark bid his brother sit down.

"Who says you've ever forgiven it?"

"Quark, he was a child at the time. He didn't understand what he was doing."

"That doesn't mean you weren't or aren't still angry with him."

The proprietor put his hand on Rom's shoulder.

"That doesn't mean you didn't feel betrayed by your own son."

_**7**_

"Shields are holding."

That was what Worf said, and Nog had no reason to doubt it. The raised power output that had given their cloaked position away also meant that they already had the ready systems fully charged and then some. But whether or not shields were holding in that instant, they wouldn't last too long beyond that. The enemy's overlarge crafts were built with the exact reverse of the logic used to create the Defiant-Class. They were the embodiment of the Korrd-Powell Rule of warfare : Bring a lot more firepower to the table than you will ever need, and you will never want for it, no matter the target. The ships' gravimetric pull alone made the Defiant's job all that much harder.

"Captain, permission to fire another spread?"

Sisko did not acknowledge Nog immediately.

"We're in position. Time to enact Admiral Kirk's surprise."

Nog for some reason then recalled that, in Sisko's case, it was usually the Admiral deferring to the Captain, instead of the other way round.

"Ensign Nog, fire that spread, but slow its speed to thirty percent of normal. Wide dispersal."

"Sir, at that slow a speed, they'll pick off our torpedoes like gnats!"

"Ensign, now please!"

Nog obeyed, and on-screen saw his prediction confirmed. He thought surely his other prediction would be quick in following.

"We're dead."

But as the spread was casually taken to pieces by Dominion forces that may as well have been laughing at them, whether they actually were or not, Nog and everyone else aboard were reminded of why death might think twice about trying to take them, that particular day. A Kirk with a plan was leading them, even in absentia. His pre-recorded voice rang out over speakers..

"Admiral Kirk to Expedition : The word is given-Code-Remember The Odyssey!"

Worf scanned.

"Sir, our signal is being jammed. That is to say, our long-range signals."

Sisko rubbed his hands together.

"Then let's go short range. Helm-pull us back and out of here. Mister Nog-full photon torpedo spread as we retreat."

"Captain-they're not letting us retreat. We're boxed in."

"We're not the ones boxed in, Nog. Not by a long shot. Activate the next recording."

"Kirk to Expedition. Remember Betazed!"

Sisko saw his vessel withdraw from directly in front of the mammoth ships, but it was a moot point. They would be back on the Defiant in a single minute. Ben didn't feel like giving them that minute.

"Activate final recording."

"Kirk to Expedition. Remember The Valiant!"

Who, Nog wondered, was the Admiral talking to besides them? Was there a USS Expedition? He tried to recall that before his question was dramatically answered by Worf.

"Federation ships decloaking, Captain. The Reliant, The Monitor, The Merrimac, The Nimitz, The T'Non..."

On he went, and so was the plan revealed at last. Nog grinned, and breathed a sigh of relief.

"Seventeen Defiant class ships. I wasn't even aware we had that many in this sector."

Jake's face showed concern.

"We don't. That's probably the first thing my access agreement restricts me on. But we also don't have any other cloaked ships."

Nog caught this, and was almost annoyed with Jake, but shortly realized what this simple tactic might cost the Federation in the long-term.

"Captain, I'm afraid he's right. Neither his agreement nor my oath covers illegal activity, and those ships clearly violate the Treaty Of Algeron."

"Keep to your post, Ensign. Jake? Take a look at these secret orders."

The Defiant-class ships did not have the raw power of their opponents, though they were many times more maneuverable. In theory, the smaller ships should have all been detected and destroyed from a distance. But the behemoths had been drawn in by the lone and seemingly vulnerable Defiant, and their demise was now as inevitable as the two ships Kirk had named in his coded message.

Jake read the orders on the PADD, then explained what he saw.

"Alliance vessels on patrols scanned these three headed towards Betazed, all of them cloaked. The cloaks must have been stolen, or substandard. So the one ship radically increased its power output and decloaked, hiding the others from direct scanning by masking them. A task force was assembled to take them out, since, when combined with Dominion assets already stationed near Betazed, it would have made the eventual effort to retake that world something like a suicide mission."

Nog, not wishing to be admonished again, kept firing when necessary, but asked a question.

"What about the sectors surrounding Betazed?"

Jake checked.

"General Martok's forces moved in when some of the known Defiant-class ships pulled out. He apparently relishes the Vulcans and Andorians owing him."

Well, at least his ships are legally cloaked, though Nog.

"What about the Treaty Of Algeron?"

Jake shook his head.

"This mission has tacit Romulan approval. It's a negotiated extension of the same deal that gave Defiant its cloak. It allowed for the use of cloaked ships to take out targets of high priority and sudden opportunity."

As though they'd never had any dispute at all, Nog asked the obvious.

"Then why don't we see a lot more of them?"

Jake actually whistled.

"This cloak-allowance has a Bajoran ton of restrictions. To be used legally within the agreement, one of the ships involved must be Defiant itself. A Senior Admiral must be present in a nearby sector, and report the occurrence immediately after to an appropriate Romulan official. All the extra cloaks involved and the records of their use in battle must be promptly surrendered to said official, by the Senior Admiral, and he or she must..."

Jake sat down, and looked at his father..

"Dad, this says that Admiral Kirk is a Romulan hostage!. That he'll be in Romulan custody until they are satisfied conditions of the agreement have been met."

Sisko closed his eyes, then looked plainly at his son.

"We don't want to become a cloak-based power, Jake. We don't skulk, where we can help it. As to the rest-let's just say some Romulans felt burned by some events just prior to their entry into this war. The prospect of having James Kirk's blood-kin in their hands sweetened the deal enough to close it."

"Burned, sir?"

"They-expressed concerns about what they called the Federation's moral decay."

While murmurs about Romulan nerve abounded, Ben was not among those saying this. He had a sick feeling about why the Romulans were upset-and who they might be upset with. Though parts of it didn't make sense, other parts fit all too well.

"Captain, one battleship has exploded, one is about to do so-and the third has a major hull breach- in a certain spot, sir."

Nog saw it as well.

"Cadet Collins-please come here."

Nog adjusted the yield and targeting on the photon torpedoes while the phasers and quantum torpedoes of the seventeen ships continued to tear holes in the shields of the remaining ship.

"Nog?"

"Dorian, please fire that last missile when Commander Worf makes the call."

Collins sat down, and no one objected to this, at least then and there.

"Its shields are down."

At Worf's words, Collins fired a single photon torpedo into the Judas-Fish false weak spot that now had a real hole in it. The battleship shuddered and soon after, it was no more. Red Squad had been avenged. But Dorian just looked lost as she gave Nog back his post.

"They're still dead. That hasn't changed."

The mission fueled by strategy, necessity and vengeance was over. But Jake still wasn't talking with Nog unless he had to. Admiral Kirk faced possible long-term imprisonment at the hands of an unpredictable ally. Captain Sisko wrestled with the thought that a secret devil's deal he had made might now claim the Admiral's freedom.

Like most things in the Dominion War, it was a very complicated victory.


	7. Part Six

Part Six

_**1**_

If anyone had thought that the sequence of events that began with Admiral Leyton's misuse of Red Squad had ended with the destruction of the Dominion battleship that had claimed all but one of the cadets, it was not a thought held for very long.

"Captain, we will not permit them to be continually slandered in this way. We can still go to the press. There are reporters out there who are not your ungrateful son!"

"Mister Belham, my son is grateful for his life, as am I. And I would be grateful if you would consider the thought that taking a group of good kids who got badly lost and artificially raising them up to be heroic angels does them just as great a disservice as any perceived slander. Your daughter and all her comrades would now be unvarnished living heroes had they only headed home. The decision on their culpability stands. Starfleet is not the board of regents at a private school, and assigning responsibility for disaster is not detention or academic probation, to be threatened away. But I'll tell you what, sir. You keep on being concerned for their public images-and I will concern myself with the sobering sight of their names on the Wall Of The Fallen at Admiralty Hall! Sisko out."

Ben sighed as he keyed in the codes to disallow further calls from that source.

"I didn't just say that to a grieving parent, did I?"

Dax had an answer of sorts.

"At the risk of sounding pathetically like a name-dropper, I once knew a great man whose huge wrenching grief over his son's murder nearly caused him to let a historic chance for peace slip away. Speaking of name-dropping, Ben, did you ever get any grief at the Academy, over your great-grandfather's actions? Curzon was always afraid to ask. I think he sensed you weren't all that comfortable with it."

It was a massively off topic question, and Sisko welcomed it.

"By the time I was a cadet, Admiral Cartwright was a note in a history book. By then, he was just another cardboard villain stopped by-what was that man's name again?"

Dax smiled.

"Ya know, I can never remember it?"

"Plus-I didn't have the same last name."

Dax chuckled.

"I know how that can be."

A message from Kira made Ben bristle.

"Send them in, Major."

His name was Travek, and if his displeased look seemed more pronounced than the normally somewhat dour Romulan aspect, this was not just imagined on Sisko's part. He looked at Ben with raw contempt, and at Kirk with a half-sneer that seemed to indicate a target had been acquired. Kirk walked with him, and Sisko was very pleased to see that he was not shackled or otherwise restrained. This pleasure would not last.

"The agreement has been wholly violated. Admiral Kirk is to remain in our custody indefinitely."

_**2**_

"Talk to me!"

As fervently as he had traveled the station to discredit him only a week ago, Nog now traveled it to speak to him. He sought doggedly to gain back one of the few things he could ever truly call his own, Ferengi beliefs about property aside.

"Talk to me!"

Jake was not going out of his way to avoid Nog. But nor was he seeking him out.

"The tribunal is over. You can talk to me now."

Jake finally turned from his stride and looked at him.

"Like we talked on board the Valiant, when I asked too many questions? Like we talked at the Academy, when I cramped your style?"

"Oh, please, Hu-mon! You have a fairly long list of blatant stupidities yourself. I mean, your one girlfriend was a disembodied entity of some kind. I mean, what is it with your family and non-corporeals?"

Jake folded his arms, and then looked out the window at the wormhole. Seeing that they were alone, he spoke some less-than-reverent words.

"Smite him, please."

"Funny. Now how about we have this out?"

Jake moved for his father's quarters.

"Nog, we had a good run. But we've grown too far apart. We've seen that about five times now. Let's leave it where it is, before it ends-maybe literally-with us at each other's throats. In the future, I'd rather run into a good childhood friend I parted ways with than an enemy I have to avoid. Where we were aboard Valiant? While we are together, that is where we're always gonna end up. I'm not standing here as Mister Pure, Nog. I'm just standing down from the battle. I'm stepping away from the chasm, and I'm suggesting you do the same."

Furious, Nog walked away without responding to Jake's invalid argument. Why was he at this point, Nog wondered? And why did it seem all-too familiar? As he entered Rom's quarters to have dinner, he could not have realized all the whys and the wherefores were about to catch up with him in a major way.

_**3**_

"Father?"

Neither Leeta nor Quark were with Rom. On Nog's plate sat Pmiwek, a hard cold bread similar in some ways to the hardtack biscuits of the British Navy on Ancient Earth. Among Ferengi, it was a meal served for one reason alone.

"Father, what's going on?"

Rom looked at his son.

"It took your uncle to see it. How I was hell-bent on making sure no one punished you, despite knowing that you maybe had done something wrong."

"Isn't that what a parent does?"

"Yes. But I was finally forced to see it. I wasn't protecting you from their punishment. I was keeping you for mine. By not saying anything, by always sparing you whenever I could, I was making sure you felt guilt over things long past."

Rom walked over slowly, and shook his head as he did.

"At first, it all sounded like most of the things your uncle says, but he actually managed to make a good point or two. Mind you, it took him just about forever to get there. I mean, why he thinks he's some kind of Counselor...Commander Worf's ex-girlfriend, now THAT's a Counselor. Heh. But anyway, he showed me how maybe what happened between you and Jake on the Valiant wasn't the first time something like that happened to you."

Nog had mentioned this in passing during the hearing. But he had thought it would surely be swept aside, as surely as every one of his early attempts to talk about it had.

"You told me that we never discuss that. Has that changed?"

"Because it has to, son. Because I want to end your punishment for something that you didn't even realize was wrong, and that I didn't even realize I resented you for. Don't you see? Not using my skills in any meaningful way for the longest time, stupidly agreeing to keep you out of school, letting our existence become an appendage of Quark's. I was even punishing me to punish you. I was wounding us both, just to make sure you always felt rotten inside, and unable to even bring it up."

Nog looked down.

"You have to know I'm sorry. That I wished I could take it all back."

"But you can't, Nog. It's done. And I know you're sorry. I'm sorry that I didn't bring this up with you the instant you were old enough to really understand what happened."

"I always understood. I knew what I did. I was just afraid to even touch on it. Uncle certainly learned not to. But I'm surprised Moogie never did. No way you'd punch her and survive."

Rom sort-of smiled.

"If your uncle sometimes can't give me a break, your Moogie sometimes indulges me too much. I have this knot of sheer dread in my stomach that she's going to persuade Zek to get me some sort of high-ranking job. Besides, whether she's letting me off the hook or Quark is pushing me, it doesn't matter. Because in not getting this over with, I wronged you worse than you ever wronged me. And I'm supposedly an adult. So Nog? As I punish you with my overdue words, remember that they are also my way of letting you go from the past, and saying that I'm sorry, too. You were a child, and I should not have kept it back this long. It wasn't either of our fault how it started. But I find that doesn't change the way I feel about those things. Do you want me to do it now?"

Nog sat down to his meal.

"My best friend isn't speaking to me, Father. I don't want to repeat that history with him. I want to end that history with you, and start over with you both. I'm ready to be punished. I've been ready for a long time. Let me pay my debts. Let me eat the worst from our cupboard. Let me take the worst from our stores, and thus raise the value of our inventory. Let us retire the old debts."

Rom continued from Jahrin's Foreclosures and Fables.

"Let us retire the old debts, and from their refinanced value create new opportunities and then draw up a new ledger, and know only profit thereby."

If those words might seem comical to a non-Ferengi, Rom's next ones through tearful eyes would not.

"Nog-you tore out my heart."

_**4**_

Sisko gave the caller his best assurances.

"Admiral, we reminded Travek that by law, a Starfleet Officer may be called back into service at almost any time, so long as it is of their free will. He huffed a bit, but withdrew his claim that the agreement had been violated by virtue of Admiral Kirk being mostly retired. He did vow rather strongly to scour the records of the hunt and the battle for any other violations, though. In the meantime, Admiral Kirk is free to roam the station, though he is not to attempt to leave it."

On-screen, Starfleet Senior Operations Chief Admiral Alynna Nechayev sighed.

"Captain Sisko, Peter Kirk is an unapologetic reactionary and an old fiend. He is forever chewing someone's ear off about the Golden Age of the blessed James T. Kirk. He and his wife can't seem to go a day without telling me that a tough but workable treaty ruined the Federation for all time."

Sisko saw the tough woman's gaze soften considerably.

"And if you let him be dragged off to a Romulan prison for any reason other than the most grotesque, blatant, undeniable violations of that agreement, you won't just have me to deal with.

That old man is well-loved by every Starfleet officer to pass through his classroom for the past fifty or so years. Including this one. And you do not want to be the one who tells Admiral Saavik her husband isn't coming home."

Sisko couldn't dispute that.

"We played it tight and by the book, Admiral. I cannot see them finding a blasted thing in those records. So tell Admiral Saavik and the forty or so children they've adopted over the years to whip up some coffee, and heat it with a hand-phaser if they have to. 'Kobayashi' Kirk is coming home."

The nickname cadets had given Kirk had nothing to do with the famous test of command skills. Rather, it was due to the fact that his exobiology course was one of eight that a cadet had to pass in order to graduate, and while he never made it easy, the most basic lessons were less about speculated unknown alien life forms and more about life in general. Nechayev still seemed worried, though.

"Remember, Captain, these are Romulans we're talking about. And their displeasure about certain aspects of their entry into this war have been made very evident."

Sisko braced himself. He had to know.

"Admiral, what about their entry has them so upset with the Federation?"

Nechayev's gaze hardened again. It now seemed to convey transmitted ice.

"This is a dirty war, Captain Sisko. Its dragged us all down into the mud. Some of us more than others. Nechayev out."

Ben sat alone, and again heard words from a deleted log entry. The words of a man who had found it far too easy to justify the grimmest, most corrupt actions and almost cheerfully say that he would do them all over again. Ben knew that man was not entirely likeable or someone he wanted to have around. Now joining all that was the thought that this man was also not as clever as he thought.

"My God."

_**5**_

"You do realize that pursuing this will have people calling you for an utter hypocrite? That doing this will make you the most unpopular man in Starfleet for an awful lot of people? Julian, even Keiko took his course, when preparing for life aboard the Enterprise-D. Everyone who's been at the Academy for the most tangential of reasons, and that includes exchange students from allies, new contacts and enemies, all hold Peter Kirk in great affection."

Bashir was having none of it.

"So? He violated the law, same as my father. It should be made known of. I won't let a corrupt galactic dynasty have a special justice all for itself, Miles.

O'Brien left, unsure of what further advice to give. Julian returned to his patient, the other person he spent the most time with aboard Deep Space Nine.

"What precisely is wrong with me?"

"Precisely? You have a hangover."

Garak held the cold compress to his forehead, on occasion switching it to his throbbing temples.

"I don't see how that could be possible. All I had yesterday was my usual lemon tea and wheat toast for breakfast, and later on that delightful if somewhat gastronomically challenging honey butter kettle popcorn. I didn't even have my nightly taste of Malonedgeberry wine, before going to sleep."

Bashir waved an open hand.

"Well, there you have it. Cardassian digestive tracts always hold back a small portion of each meal to be processed sometimes much later."

"Doctor-this may surprise you, but I do know just a little about the Cardassian body. After all, I use one quite extensively."

Julian walked over to his diagnostic display screen.

"That comment I'm not touching. But what ended up happening was that each element of your meals combined. The acidity of the lemon. The wheat from the toast. The corn. The sugars coating your popcorn. They fermented inside you, Mister Garak, and became a rather potent, almost alcoholic variety of beer."

Garak felt slightly better just for knowing, in any event.

"So I was intoxicated? It would explain how unusually talkative I was during that little gathering."

"Actually, Garak, I've found that your talkativeness has a direct correlation to how mysterious you wish to seem at any given time."

Garak smiled.

"You are learning, Doctor. But could I perhaps have an antidote available for potential future recurrences of this accident?"

"Whatever for? You weren't even truly inebriated, merely off balance."

Garak looked a bit nervous as he responded.

"I've never trusted myself when impaired, Julian. Since Empok Nor, I think that I even fear the prospect of accidentally losing my judgment."

Bashir felt a trifle foolish. Of course Garak would have such a concern.

"I'll see if I can get you something that will aid in the corn's digestion. I'll add that to Odo's request and have an idea within a week, I hope."

"The Constable has a health concern?"

"More a security concern. An offhand comment from the Admiral made him realize he has no true way of showing that he is not another shapeshifter. All of our current tests are only concerned with exposing shapeshifters posing as Solids. I wouldn't know where to start figuring how to verify the identity of one particular Changeling."

Garak considered for a moment.

"Two things, Doctor. One, you should perhaps look for aftereffects of the merger between the Constable and the unfortunate infant changeling, that restored his abilities a year or so back. That can't be something that's happened to most shapeshifters."

"I was going to look for effects of the process they used to banish him, but the re-merger would tend to be both unique and not easily duplicated. Perhaps those seeming anomalies I spotted in Odo's structure at last scan are just that, though as always, what we know about the Founders is dwarfed by that which we simply don't."

Bashir would learn otherwise about those very real anomalies, as he, Odo and Miles joined together to end the very dirty program that would yet help end a very dirty war. But for now, the slow decay of the Constable's structure matched that of the Federation he was allied with. For then and there, Garak continued.

"Two-I would carefully consider both your approach and your evidence in this matter concerning Admiral Kirk. For example, why would a mostly retired officer play with his health and remaining career that way?"

Bashir shrugged.

"If what I've found is correct, his reason speaks to the most basic Human drive."

Garak nodded.

"Sex."

_**6**_

The commanding figure on the TV screen finished the most stirring of his words in that selection.

"...then let them come...to Berlin!"

Vic Fontaine shut the device behind his bar off, as he always did forty-five minutes before his set began.

"I only put it up because the patrons insisted. The holo-patrons, I mean. The program has to be responsive to their needs and wants, but I never wanted this idiot box anywhere near my place."

Admiral Kirk sipped a Coca-Cola mixed nicely with grenadine cherry syrup, and nodded.

"I don't blame you. Why people would want to stare at a limited-use vid screen when all this is going on is beyond me. Vic, yours is the second most elegant place I've ever seen."

"Admiral, I'm gonna ask you to defend that, and no offense, you better be good."

Kirk twirled his drink.

"I was seven. I was recovering from nerve damage the parasites caused. He took me into the turbolift, and gave me a small version of his mustard-colored tunic. We went up, the lift opened-and there it was. My uncle's home among the stars. The only place he would ever truly belong. The only place I ever wanted to be. The only man I ever wanted to be."

Vic smiled.

"What about the ladies? Heh-those miniskirts."

Kirk nodded.

"Every time we mind-meld and she sees me thinking of one of them, my wife just arches her eyebrows and calls me a baby pig. But she hasn't kicked me out yet."

Fontaine almost broached asking how it was keeping up with a Vulcan, but the customers started to come in, and with a mix of holos and Niners about, he would have enough non-1960's references to explain as it stood. Kirk asked a question instead.

"How far into the 1960's does this program go?"

Vic pointed at the TV.

"That handsome gent you just saw who crashes at 1600 Penn's Avenue kind of stops the show, if you get my meaning."

November 22, 1963. It made sad and perfect sense. Fontaine saw that Kirk got it.

"I tried going past it, but it is such a sad day. Plus, when February of 64' rolls around, and the Mop-Tops get off the plane from England? Ho, boy. Every single old man in the joint says 'Geez, Vic-they look like girls!'. So I compromise. Dusty Springfield crops up on occasion, and the record machine has Frankie singing 'Yesterday'-and 'New York, New York'. You can't have Frankie without that song. I thought about Rod Stewart in his later years-some good covers. But Julian tells me we'd need an upgrade to handle it, and my beloved programmer likes to sneak little tricks in those. As a button-pusher-he makes a good key-pusher. Hey-it's the Major!"

_**7**_

Kira sat down next to Kirk, and the older man gestured.

"Vic-could we have a private booth? Major Kira and I have to mix business with pleasure."

Fontaine found one, whether it was there before or not. Once they were seated, a slightly confused Kira had a flavored seltzer.

"Admiral, what exactly is this concerning?"

Kirk may have loved the atmosphere, but he became very, very serious.

"Major, I'm told the Prophets' Orb Of Time is on board the station."

"Well, yes. There was a recent incident involving Keiko O'Brien and her lookalike remote ancestor, a Korean woman who emigrated to the United States in the 1950's. We kept it here in case the chronal chaos began again."

Admiral Kirk looked badly upset.

"There's no easy way to put this, Major. It's potentially explosive, so it was decided that I would communicate it face-to-face. Arne Darvin was broken out of prison several months ago. We found his body a few days later. He drew a clock on a stone with his own blood. He had been tortured, slowly. We believe it was to gain his knowledge of the Orb. The kidnapper wore a disguise, but we now know who it was without a doubt. I'm sorry to tell you this, Major."

Kira saw that she was being prepared, but a name was already forming. The very worst name possible.

"Admiral-who was it?"

She already knew, long before he said it.

"Gul Dukat."

After a silent minute or two, Kira finally reacted.

"You say it took you a while to penetrate his disguise?"

Kirk nodded.

"Besides his physical disguise, he used a chemical that scrambles the ability of scanners to read DNA. They got a trace, but it read as too many different species. Though the list was narrowed, I was brought in. My field is exobiology, and-well, I'm old. By sheer passage of time, I've encountered more species than any other person in this quadrant, or damned near."

Kira fought to remain on subject, but when that subject was Dukat, it was a redefinition of pain itself.

"Must have been some interesting ones."

"I could tell you about a particularly nasty mutant variant of Aldebaran serpent, Major, but I doubt it would be of much help to either of us."

She looked up.

"You're right, Admiral. But you see, Gul Dukat and I weren't always enemies. When I helped him to have a relationship with his half-Bajoran daughter, Tora Ziyal-"

"The girl who was killed during the re-taking of the station?"

"Yes. I'm surprised you know that."

Kirk pulled out a holo-padd. A young girl with antennae and a curious face appeared.

"I have 23 adopted daughters, Major. Most of my children are hybrids. Saavik and I always felt like born misfits, so we took in the children who still have the highest rate of abandonment in our supposedly enlightened galaxy. That small wonder is Andia. Half El-Aurian and half-Andorian. She listens just well enough to make you regret saying what you did. Only her brother Telemachus-half-Klingon, half-Vulcan-can corral her when she's on a sarcastic tear. But he never would. She has him firmly wrapped around her finger. I'm only slightly less so. So when a man-even a man like Dukat-loses his little girl in so public a manner-I know."

Kira found herself mentally asking the Prophets to keep the little one before her in image out of harm's way.

"She's adorable, Admiral."

"Thank you. Her one sore spot is the look she gets when forced to think about the birth parent who most betrayed her. Not merely by way of abuse, but by way of severe disappointment."

Kirk then let loose another surprise.

"What did he do to your mother, Kira?"

Nerys' eyes went wide.

"How?"

"It's that look, Major. A father knows."

"Does a father also know what may well be none of his business?"

Kirk, instead of reacting harshly or apologizing, smiled.

"No. That a father has to learn."

Kira calmed quickly.

"Admiral, I can tell you this much : Dukat did hurt my mother. And I did find this out through him and use of The Orb. And though it seems like a man like Dukat would have infinite uses for such a thing as that, he is also so obsessed with the idea of his destiny that tampering with the past to change it would probably frighten him more than us."

"Then he hasn't changed at all."

Kira realized what he meant by those words.

"You've known him?"

Kirk brushed something off his moustache.

"Tain and I arranged a meeting. The Orion Syndicate was making use of one of our disputed border regions to run their contraband freely and unchecked. With him-and I honestly couldn't tell whether they were friends standing together or enemies watching each other-was Gul Terem Dukat, and with him as an aide was his son, the man you know. Dukat endlessly berated his son, sometimes to the point where Tain asked his boy Elim to clear them out of the room."

"You knew that Garak was Tain's son?"

"Everyone knew that, Major. Tain was never as clever as he thought, and he was forever making cutesy remarks about the subject of Garak's parentage, as though no one could figure it out from their resemblance. I mean, people used to make insinuations about Jim and my mother, until I showed them just how much he and my father looked alike. So if my less pronounced resemblance caused such talk, people could do the math on Garak. In any event, Tain treated his secret son far better than Dukat treated his known heir. Finally, the son told the father that his shadow was an oppressive place to live in. Then, Dukat pointed to me."

Kira knew that, aside from the awkwardness Kirk must have felt at that past moment, something far grimmer surely began then. Kirk kept on.

"He said that I was the sole heir to the Federation's greatest hero, yet I was not swallowed by a comparatively larger shadow than his son dwelt in. Whatever the truth of that, Dukat the younger then looked at me, sneered and said : 'You are a man worth remembering, Admiral.' And I had no doubt that he would."

"Have you seen him since?"

Admiral Kirk nodded.

"I had narrowed down the species of Darvin's killer to being a hominid reptiloid one. So as I ran the last cross-check of known DNA scans, I received a message."

"From Dukat."

"He told me to say hello to you and Ben Sisko-and then he ended the transmission."

"If it's worth anything, Admiral, there is no way he's as obsessed with you as he is with myself and Captain Sisko."

"That's not what bothers me most, Major. Five minutes later, my cross-checks pegged him as our killer, and ten minutes after that, I was asked to head up the Valiant tribunal."

This surprised Kira a lot less than it obviously did Kirk.

"He is insane, and he has insane ways. Happily, given that both you and Dukat are involved, I should be able to obtain permission to use the Orb rather quickly, so we can see if it's been tampered with. Was there anything else, Admiral?"

"In fact, yes. Major, I teach a Cadet Seska Nahan, a promising student of exobiology. He wants to one day Captain a ship that explores a freed Gamma Quadrant. But when he learned I was coming here, he asked that I be his Intercessor. It seems an older cousin of his, a Seska Marlis, was falsely accused of collaboration during the Occupation. He wants the record cleared up, and her name restored. But I've gotten nowhere corresponding with your Kai on this matter."

Kira breathed in. Somehow, the Kai just couldn't be kept out of her life for very long.

"Nor are you likely to. Admiral, the Senior Mass Cleric in charge of sometimes harshly dealing with collaborators during the latter part of the Occupation was Winn Adami. Even though Seska Marlis was theoretically proven innocent of those charges and lived, she never came forward to have them expunged. Until she does that, she can't be helped, and the Kai is unlikely to call attention to anything like that from her own past, unless she's forced to."

Kirk had come fairly loaded with surprises, it seemed.

"The Seska Marlis who turned up alive and well a few years after her supposedly bungled execution was an Obsidian Order deep-cover spy. She joined the Maquis, and was among those swept from the Badlands, and with Chakotay, joining the crew of the Voyager, currently lost in the Delta Quadrant. Files sent from Voyager during their brief window of contact with Starfleet told how she was exposed, joined a local indigenous power in a series of pointless schemes, and was finally killed. They never learned her Cardassian name. Major, I must assume that the real Seska Marlis is long dead, and that she may even have been set up by the Obsidian Order so to create a spy. On that basis, could Kai Winn at least consider summarily restoring the real Seska's honor?"

Kira had a thought, but there was no need to bother the Admiral with it. If Captain Sisko could get her a look at the Voyager's files on the false Seska Marlis, a promise she had made to Legate Tekeny Ghemor might at last be fulfilled.

"Once again, sir, if it's you making the request, plus with all this new evidence, it should be easy."

Kirk seemed pensive.

"That's another thing I meant to ask while I was here. Major Kira-why am I a hero to a people whose defense I abandoned? Maybe I'm just missing something, but I would think my name would be reviled, if it were remembered at all."

Grateful to have the riddle of whether this woman could have been the long-missing Ileana Ghemor off the table, not to mention avoiding thoughts about another of Dukat's sick mind games, Kira answered the older Terran honestly.

"You were reviled. All through my time in the Resistance, along with every other pipe dream we spoke of, it was always said that the restored Bajor would call for your extradition."

"What changed?"

"After the Cardassians left, Kai Opaka studied the damage they deliberately did to our world as they withdrew. She saw some of the worst-off places, and then declared 'Captain Peter is to be commended, not condemned. For if this was what they did during a peaceful, orderly, planned withdrawal, the mind does not contain room enough to contemplate their actions if made to withdraw under threat. Captain Peter made the right choice, and I say that he is a hero for it.' It didn't take long before everyone agreed."

Kirk understood better now, but still had some confusion.

"Errrr-Captain Peter?"

Kira nodded.

"Your name was mistakenly transliterated in early documents by some of our people who couldn't understand why anyone would put their family name second. In fact, the first time I ever heard of your uncle, Julian Bashir had to tell me who he was, and I only later found out that you were his nephew."

Peter Kirk looked nearly stunned.

"You mean to say that, when most Bajorans think of Kirk, they think of me first and Jim second?"

"Yes, Admiral. I'm sorry if you find that offensive."

Kirk began to laugh audibly.

"Offensive, Major Kira? I'm going to have my next vacation on Bajor!"

_**8**_

Kira wasn't quite sure she understood, but smiled along with him as they exited the holosuite. Quark was waiting, looking impatient.

"It's about time you two finished up. Well, the bar is closed for the evening, so thank you for your business, and please leave."

Kira saw that the tavern was emptied.

"Quark, what is this? You almost never close."

He came out from behind the bar, looking honestly delighted.

"Major, the Admiral's kind exoneration of my nephew has led to certain events which in turn led to tonight's ceremony at Rom's. The Retirement Of The Old Debt."

"That's a very important celebration in Ferengi culture, isn't it? Also very rare."

"Not only rare, Major-wholly unexpected. I mean, I thought they'd never really sit and talk it out, even if you had them at phaser-point. Anyway, you have the lock-up code. I have to make sure Leeta feeds the yhlie-grubs the right herbs, or they'll end up tasting like plaster. Come again to Quark's!"

Kirk watched the Ferengi practically dance out the door.

"He seems happy."

Kira moved for the tavern's door.

"I'll say. He didn't even stop to leer at or proposition me. Admiral, I'll contact First Minister Shakaar. He can likely expedite matters on the Orb. Now, I have to enter-"

Someone stopped her.

"Nerys, I'll lock up Quark's for you."

Bashir looked at Kirk, not quite hiding his glare.

"The Admiral and I have to talk about something we may have in common."

Kirk spoke to Bashir after Kira left to set things in motion, regarding the Orb Of Time.

"Doctor-you have no idea just how much we have in common."

Julian saw that the older man was not at all nervous, even with the implied threat of his possible exposure. But perhaps that would change, once he was confronted with Bashir's startling evidence.

_**9**_

"I still don't see what we have to discuss."

Jake was wavering, but it would still take more time than Nog wanted to invest in breaking through the barrier whose existence he now fully realized was somewhat more on him than on Sisko. So he didn't try in any direct way at this point.

"It's not a discussion. You're doing the follow-up story to your original article on the Valiant, right?"

"Yeah. So?"

Jake didn't ask _'You Have A Problem With That_?'. His tone of voice asked it for him. But Nog knew enough to bypass it.

"So when I called you–well, you know-Dax told me to apologize before a Bajoran Mass. Its tomorrow. I assume you'll want to include that in the article, as well."

Jake sighed.

"Nog, I'm not going to include that comment in my article. You were in a bad way. That's understandable. I don't want us to be enemies, alright?"

Nog shook his head.

"I want you to include it. If you don't have what happened on the record, it'll end up as a rumor, and before I know it, someone will be saying that I desecrated one of the Orbs, or something. I want those words on the record, along with the fact that I apologized, and that everyone who was offended forgave me-or not, as the case may be. You are a reporter?"

Jake seemed to bristle a bit.

"Yes. A very truthful reporter."

"Good. Then you're who I need, to bring this matter to a close. I'll see you there. I intend to sit through the entire mass, by the way."

"I'll be there."

"There's a rumor that Admiral Kirk may finally accept the Bajora Medal. Maybe he'll do that there, too. It would make an excellent coda to the story, especially the juxtaposition."

Jake looked surprised.

"Juxtaposition?"

"Of course. The original good Starfleet child, having helped avenge the downfall of the wayward cadets of Red Squad, finally accepting his due? It's a natural."

Jake nodded.

"Okay. Thanks-I mean it. Thanks."

The door closed again, but perhaps not as tightly. Nog chuckled, and saw Rom doing the same around the corner.

"Did you hear my whispered advice?"

"Loud and clear, Father. But won't he be upset if Admiral Kirk doesn't take the medal?"

Rom pshawed the thought.

"We had to get him there for you. Rule Of Acquisition Number 219 - A customer may come into your shop for what you do have, but more will come in for what you might have."

Nog looked back at the door. He had crossed one bridge with his father, but he knew that the worst was yet to come.

"Let's go and have our feast, Father."

_**10**_

"Of course we will, Child. Thank the Admiral on my behalf. To have it known once and for all that poor Seska was merely another innocent victim of the wretched Obsidian Order will help more souls than merely her own to be at ease."

Kai Winn signed off, and Kira could not stop her dripping sarcasm immediately thereafter.

"I'll just bet some souls feel more at ease. So long as you can blame condemning an innocent on someone else, eh, Eminence?"

Had anything less than an unjustly condemned soul's reclamation been at stake, Nerys would have been no more hesitant than usual to let the Kai have it with both barrels. But she also had to complete the other, more vital piece of business Kirk had brought before her. The second call was answered, and she was thankful he showed no signs of being bitter.

"Nerys! You look wonderful. I'd heard tell of a holographic tavern with an odd host-and that you and the Constable were seen frequenting it. Just loose talk, mind you. Mainly, you and Odo were mentioned in passing. This-Sinatra Packrat?- was the real subject of discussion. Especially among the ladies."

Kira smiled.

"You and Glora have got to stop by the place. Vic makes that world come alive."

"Count on it. At least, count on it eventually. If I don't have a legislative logjam to clear, she has a vote in the Assembly. However did we manage to see each other?"

"I think the Prophets lent us some time."

He nodded.

"The Orb Of Time again?"

"Sorry to impose, Shakaar. But I know that you now have say over who gets near it."

The First Minister looked tired. Kira understood this all too well.

"The Kai and some of the elder Vedeks threw a fit. But ultimately, though we are blessed by the Prophets to even have it, the Orb is, quite literally, a time bomb waiting to be exploded. We need pacifists to guide our souls, but we need soldiers to guard the Orb. Especially if Admiral Kirk is correct about what monster somehow used it. Nerys, will you journey alone?"

"No. I've asked Chief O'Brien to go with me. He has some experience with chronal dislocation."

"I grew up hating Admiral Kirk, till we saw the ruined lands, and the correctness of his choice. I shall consult Elder Varan, and she shall have the final say over whether you may approach the Orb.. I believe that she will allow it. After that, Nerys..."

Kira steeled herself.

"It's in the hands Of The Prophets."

_**11**_

Sisko very nearly threw the docu-padd back in the Romulan's face.

"The parts for the extra cloaks were three hours late in being delivered to you, that's true. But this 'violation' was done to better keep the part of the agreement that has us turning over any and all designated parts used in this operation."

Travek seemed incapable of any expression except displeasure.

"Do you even intend to attempt to honor this agreement?"

Sisko stood up.

"If you find that even one captain kept his parts, or reworked another cloaking device, then I will order Constable Odo to arrest that captain and the appropriate officers in his crew, and then to immediately arrest Admiral Kirk and turn him over to your custody. I will then contact Starfleet on whether I, as group leader, should simply resign or remand myself over for Court-Martial. But short of a bursting shell, Travek-you'll just have to go home empty-handed."

Travek nodded.

"Very well, Captain Sisko. But I shall continue my diligent, thorough review of these records. Admiral Kirk's family is well-known to most true Romulans as scheming, anti-government subversives..."

He turned to leave, but looked back at Sisko before he did.

"...while you are known to all Romulans."

Sisko was beyond tired of remarks that hinted at everything and yet spoke about nothing at all.

'If you have something to say about me, Travek, then I suggest you go ahead and say it."

Travek offered up a small, grim smile.

"I just did."

After Travek left for the tenth time that day, Ben Sisko realized that the needs of the war effort didn't even leave him the option of buying the Admiral's freedom with his own.

_**12**_

"So it's as simple as all that?"

Miles pointed to the screen.

"It was Garak's suggestion that did it. When the infant Changeling gave you back your true form and abilities, it rewrote your internal chronology. Based on Professor Mora's scans of you, we know your approximate age, and the readings he took that corresponded to it. But now, you're only reading as being one year old."

Odo was quite pleased with this development.

"And even fully linked, a 'toddler' Changeling wouldn't have enough experience to mimic me properly. Thank you, Chief. I'll thank Garak for his input at mealtime. If you see Doctor Bashir before I do, be sure and give him my thanks as well. I'm glad we now have a means of verification for my identity. I now also know what you Humans mean when you talk about 'trying not to think of a pink elephant'. I usually pursue my objectives with zeal, but this one really got to me."

"I'll be sure and tell Julian, Constable..."

After Odo had gone, Miles spoke under his breath.

"If he hasn't already committed career double-suicide with Admiral Kirk."

_**13**_

"Would you please explain just what you meant by that remark?"

"Of course not, Doctor. After all, flag-officers with nearly a century of service are bound by tradition to explain themselves to cryptically speaking subordinates."

Kirk saw the fixed scowl on Bashir's face.

"That was a joke, Doctor Bashir. You might do an old man the courtesy of at least pretending to laugh."

"Look at my face, Admiral Kirk. Am I laughing, or even pretending to?"

Kirk then stepped over and got up in that younger face.

"Wipe off that scowl, Doctor. I've stared into the three faces of Satan himself, and you just don't impress me."

As ridiculous and hyperbolic as that statement sounded, Julian found himself somehow believing it. But though the glare left his visage, his disapproval did not.

"You, Admiral, once did impress me. But now I'm afraid that you no longer do. I have a charge to make, sir. I need to run a medical scan on you, and I am perfectly willing to pursue this matter through channels, if I must."

"Just what charge are you looking to bring, Doctor, and on what evidence are you basing this request for a scan?"

Bashir nodded.

"That you are in violation of the laws of The Federation prohibiting the artificial evolution or genetic enhancement of humans, and the regulations that forbid such individuals from serving in Starfleet."

Kirk shook his head.

"You are aware of just how completely asinine and hypocritical you sound, right?"

Bashir kept on.

"You are a fraud, sir. An old man serving well past your time, all in an effort to keep up with a past legend that was never yours and the septennial sexual demands of your wife. You thought you could cross any line you saw fit to cross, and then get away with it cleanly. Well, I'm calling you out."

"And your evidence? That I'm a spry old man? That I satisfy my wife?-and I do. That I never forget our anniversary, or fail to leave the refresher seat set to gender-neutral when I'm done?"

"The T'Ven Clinic, sir. THAT IS my evidence!"

Kirk chuckled.

"Thanks a lot, Doctor. I now owe Will Riker money. He bet me that I'd never find a more casually insubordinate officer than you, and damned if he wasn't right."

"Considering what Admiral Jellico once muttered while under sedation in my Sickbay, Will Riker would be an expert on insubordination, wouldn't he?"

"The T'Ven clinic, Doctor?"

Bashir was becoming agitated. Kirk knew how to press his buttons almost as well as Jack, which he just considered further proof of his assertion.

"The T'ven Clinic is on a Vulcan colony world within sight of T'Kuht. It helps non-Vulcans survive the rigors of their mates' time in Pon Farr. Their medical facilities aid in heart rate and breathing, both of which many non-Vulcans find at risk when their mate's instincts take over."

"So?"

"So-Admiral. You have never once been there, and you and your wife have seen over ten Pon Farrs in your time together. That is odd enough to make me believe I can obtain the orders to force you to undergo that scan–so don't make me."

Kirk shrugged, and walked over to the dartboard. Grabbing a single dart-bolt, he crossed back to the very edge of the room, until he exited the tavern. Looking around to see if they were alone, he then spoke.

"Hold the door, Doctor."

Word that Quark's was closed had apparently traveled quickly, for the halls nearby were deserted. As a confused Julian kept the tavern door open, Kirk threw the dart-bolt from a distance half-again as long as Bashir's personal best. It struck true, at dead-center of the board. Admiral Kirk came back inside, and looked at Bashir.

"Kind of eliminates the need for a scan, doesn't it?"

_**14**_

"All I can tell you, Admiral Saavik, is that Travek is being both very thorough and very belligerent. He seems very determined to find some minor violation of the temporary cloaking agreement, and then magnify it into a galactic case."

Since Curzon had in his time only met Peter and not Saavik Kirk, Jadzia was a bit surprised by the woman's response.

"Damned Romulans. You cannot trust any of them."

"Buuut...aren't you part Romulan?"

"What's your point?"

Dax saw Saavik turn and yell to someone off-screen.

"Xaertia! Do not hit your brother-with your other brother!"

The Vulcan raised an eyebrow.

"They ensure that I will never enjoy retirement. How many times have you been a parent, if I may be so personal, Lieutenant Da...CHILDREN! Commander Data left us that cat with the promise that it would be cared for. Clown makeup does not qualify. Aileed! I thought I told you to keep that know-it-all Camden girl away from this house-errr, keep me informed, Lieutenant. Right now, I must meditate and contain my emotions, the better to kill them all while they sleep."

As she signed off, Worf looked at his wife cautiously.

"That was a Vulcan?"

Dax chuckled.

"You try raising forty children over seventy years of marriage, then see if you could keep to the path of Surak."

After he left, Dax smiled to think of what the Kirk household must be like, and then she answered Saavik's truncated question.

"Maybe at least one more time?"

_**15**_

Around the station, lives resumed as best they could in a time of war.

"How is she, Keiko?"

"Ro says she may be out soon. The fact that she turned herself in before the Dominion destroyed the Maquis counts in her favor. So do the casualty counts. Molly's still furious she couldn't go with me. I also stopped by the Kirks. It's amazing how big that place is. Saavik is hiding her worry well. She only broke three vases-and one lirpa-and her son's bat'leth-and his wrist."

"Well, Telemachus should know better than to fight his mother when she's upset. How is Ba'el adjusting?"

"She misses her parents, and hates pretending she doesn't know who they were. And Saavik is going gray trying to keep her and Telemachus apart. Having her husband back would help a lot."

Miles sighed. Most of the Klingon children Worf had discovered among the survivors of the Romulan attack on Khitomer were able to travel to Q'onos and be adopted with simple oaths of silence, vis-a-vis their true parents' survival. But as the daughter of a Romulan officer, Ba'el would find little acceptance and far too many questions. The Kirk household was another story.

"He earned some points with me, for putting his freedom on the line for the sake of the Federation. Not to mention rank and standing. That-wasn't my way of saying I should have gone."

Keiko stood up and hugged him from behind.

"Maybe you should have. I love you for keeping your word to me. But I also saw a lot of young, wounded people back on Earth, Miles. Maybe this is the time where the little agreements need to fall by the wayside."

He turned and kissed her, wrong though she was.

"Maybe this is the time we hold them all the more sacred."

As a revered Elder Vedek heard of Kira's plea, as Dax considered the first children of the host's current life, as Worf and Odo collaborated on yet another disaster drill for a station with a bull's-eye on its pylons, and as Ben Sisko saw a decision once cast in dark onyx crystal turn to mud on his dress uniform, two men went at each other over their biggest commonality.

_**16**_

Bashir held Kirk's spirit-staff, which he now realized must have been carved from something very much like solid oak. It felt like it weighed a ton. Slowly, he shook his head.

"What did you do to yourself?"

Kirk was calmer, but no less patient with the junior officer.

"I was dying, Doctor."

Bashir put the hefty artifact aside, as he did this explanation.

"You've lived a rich, full life, sir. People die, Admiral. We fret and strut our time on the stage, and then we are done."

Kirk rolled his eyes.

"That is so damned pretentious, my head hurts."

"Admiral, give me one good reason why I should not contact all of the appropriate authorities on this matter."

Kirk opened the same magno-sealed Padd he had allowed to be used during the hunt for the Dominion battleships. After inputting the decrypting codes, he punched something up and handed it to Bashir. The doctor's eyes went wide. Kirk nodded.

"My note from the Principal."

Bashir pored over what he saw, then checked it again. It looked no different the third time through, either.

"The senior Admiralty knows of this? This is a scandal unparalleled...so now when a favored family has one of its members too ancient and creaking to serve any longer, the laws that apply to everyone else-and yes, I mean myself as well-are just winked and nodded away? Or is it only the nephews of outlaw princes who..."

Kirk cupped his hands, and then slapped them together. The resulting pop shook the glasses around them and cut right through Bashir. Kirk then held up a finger, directing the doctor to look at his face.

"Never-Never-Never-NEVER disparage his name in front of me, Doctor, or you will find out what I did to Kruge's sponsor, when I tracked him down. Got me?"

"My tone may not be proper. But the meanings behind my words stand for themselves."

"So do my socks, when I leave them on too long. And even then, they don't stink as badly as your premise."

Bashir breathed in, his ears still ringing just a bit.

"So tell me just how my premise is faulty."

"Doctor, I worked in intelligence. I have enemies, and they make assassination attempts. One nearly succeeded. I would have recovered in time, but my immediate presence was needed in some negotiations that could not be delayed. They wouldn't even accept Sarek as a replacement. So a young agent named Luther Sloane vastly exceeded his authority and ordered that I be genetically enhanced. I've signed several agreements to never seek the positions of either CIC Starfleet or the Federation Presidency. Satisfied?"

"Still–the law was broken."

"Then arrest Luther Sloane. I could never bring myself to do it, even when he ousted me."

Bashir felt foolish. While far from being truly legitimate, Kirk's explanation held water.

"My–apologies, sir. Do you wish me to record a formal message of same?"

Kirk chuckled, and tossed him a Datapadd.

"No, Doctor. I want you to listen to the message on that file. It's addressed to you. The man doing the talking isn't all that formal, though. Well, I'm off to see the Major. Good viewing...Jules."

Back in his quarters, Bashir read the name on the file's letterhead-stamp. He nearly choked

"Leonard McCoy!"


	8. Part Seven

Part Seven

_**1**_

Before they reached the shrine, Kira stopped and turned.

"Let's get one thing straight. You do not have to do this. Do we have an understanding?"

Keiko O'Brien once had an odd sense about this woman and her husband. When they had returned to their shared quarters exactly on time, that sense hadn't passed, but she knew once and for all that Kira could be trusted, and that she would have to meet that trust back again.

"Yes, Major. We do. I'm still going."

"Keiko, this could get ugly."

"Oooh, you mean one of us might get possessed or something? Nerys, Admiral Kirk asked that I do this. He said that a friend and not a stranger should stand with you in what could be a very painful and very private moment. I owe him and his wife almost as much as I owe you, so it's settled."

"Even when he minds his own business, he doesn't mind his own business."

"He was only trying to help."

Kira shrugged.

"It's like he's nothing but a grown-up Nog."

Keiko remembered one of Kirk's favorite quotes.

"_My Life Has Been A Poor Attempt To Imitate The Man. I'm Just A Living Legacy, To The Leader Of The Band_."

Kira's look softened, but her words still spoke of leeriness.

"Am I supposed to pity him, now?"

"No. Just accept my help if you'll have it, and by extension, his. It's just his way to offer whatever he has. Saavik always said he could not accept being helpless, as he was when his family was taken."

*_Accept yourself, Child.* Those were the words of a Kai who sought not political power, but the path of the Prophets. Nerys now felt awkward herself_.

"I'm not angry with him, Keiko. I guess I just keep waiting for someone like him—or like you—to turn out to be a phony. I never see it coming."

The matter settled, the two moved a bit more surely around each other, though the journey ahead was decidedly unsettling.

_**2**_

Sisko looked over the painfully-crafted letter of resignation. He held his finger over the transmit prompt.

"I'm really going to do it."

After a minute, he went to transmit. The words vanished off the screen, and Sisko himself was pulled into another realm.

"It's about time. Or not-time, as the case may be."

It was as he expected.

"You stopped me from resigning."

This one appeared as Jennifer. But if Ben had learned anything from that last sad excursion to the Mirror World, it was not to let her face take down his defenses, or soften his distaste.

"The Sisko must not leave."

He looked at her, and grew ever more angry as he did. The Prophet had quietly shifted to Kassidy.

"You directed me to stop Bajor from entering the Federation."

As he turned, the Prophet gained nothing by shifting to Jake.

"You stopped me from blowing myself up in the wormhole."

His fury needed a target besides himself, and the Prophet now appearing as Joseph was helping matters right along.

"You stopped me from yielding up the position of Emissary."

This time, Sisko saw only light. He yelled out.

"Just for the record, my sister still speaks with a slight lisp, and has a dimple on her left cheek! Now could you just choose a form and listen?"

"As the Sisko wishes."

This one nearly unnerved Ben. Facing him was a man with a full head of hair, none of it facial, the recently and reluctantly appointed officer in mourning for his wife and raising a young son in the shadow of Wolf 359, and living in a run-down station orbiting an ungrateful world that didn't want him or the Federation around.

"I believe the Sisko had a question."

But Captain Benjamin Sisko wasn't about to let Commander Benjamin Sisko unnerve him.

"Cute. Face me down with someone who lived in a seemingly simpler time. Well, I don't live there anymore. It's not where I dwell. Here it is, then. You've held my hand, slapped my hand, scolded me, directed me, given me visions galore, and maybe even moved me through time on a few occasions. You've stopped me from certain actions any number of times. So when I schemed, lied and allowed men to be murdered, where was your hand in my face? Where were your words? Where was this play of people from my life? I don't regard it as anyone's responsibility but my own, and yet, you've acted for and against me for less than what went on when Garak and I brought the Romulans into this war. So why didn't you do it then? Why are some things your business, and others just trifles?"

The Commander pointed. The landscape shifted to a harsh rocky area. In the middle was a viscous lake. Ben knew.

"This is the Founders' world. The Great Link. Why are we here? When is this?"

Commander Sisko spoke grimly.

"When the seed was planted."

As Sisko watched, a light descended from the sky, and towards the Great Link.

"Weapons fire? Is this back when they were hunted?"

"No. It is when they chose to hunt."

Sisko saw the lights slow. The lights-the blood-red lights that descended into the link. His heart sank.

"No."

The lights rose and left. After an unknown amount of time, Ben heard the voice of the one he knew as the Female Founder. She spoke ominous words for the very first time.

"Even here, in our perfect hiding place-we are not safe from the Solids. We must plan to make ourselves safe. And so over them, we shall establish total Dominion."

Sisko stared at Sisko for a good while thereafter, struck wholly silent.

At last, the Prophet spoke.

"The grim ones must be brought low. This is the task of the Sisko. Does the Sisko understand this?"

Ben nodded, numb but regaining his feeling very rapidly.

"I do. What you're telling me is, the Alliance serves your interests, while the Dominion serves those of the Pagh Wraiths, however unwittingly on either side."

He turned away, and kept talking.

"And that since the Pagh Wraiths wish to destroy all that we know, we must do anything it takes to defeat the Dominion. I see it now."

"Then the Sisko both hears and sees."

Ben turned back towards his past-doppelganger, the rage and disgust in his face disguised not at all.

"Oh, I see. I see that living beings are fighting the proxy war of bodiless cowards who get off on the bloodshed, misery and worship of we lesser beings. Or is it all the same thing to you? You live outside of time, so how can you possibly comprehend the wasted years? The years wasted on battle. The years the Founders have wasted on hate. It all must mean so very little to you. That's why you didn't stop me from listening to Garak. What were the men we murdered but a few more proxies, easily replaced? What were the lies we told but the buzzing of worker drones, making honey for your hive? What were all my loathsome actions, and the stains on my soul, except oil to move your wheels and cogs about?"

"The Sisko blames us?"

"No. I blame me, for listening to Garak without really listening or looking. I blame me, for thinking that, somehow, anything I did was right because I was the one doing it. I blame me, for allowing the fall of one world in the first all-out war we've ever really fought to so panic me, it made any option seem palatable, even desirable. But most of all, I blame me for being so stupid as to think that, were I really so far in the wrong, that you all would step in and stop me. So stand above me, stand beside me, and guide me, and shine your lights down on me and speak of space wasps and dragons the size of planets, and tell me to eat my broccoli. Just don't think that I will any longer take your words uncritically. Because as of right now, you are no longer possibly gods in my eyes. You are forevermore just another allied race in our war against the Dominion, complete with your own agenda, and while I will hear what you have to say, and take it under advisement, I just won't take it as gospel truth any longer."

The Prophet now became Curzon.

"The Sisko acts inadvisably."

Ben grinned.

"Sorry, Ambassador. But this discussion is over. I have to take a meeting with the..."

He found himself back on DS9.

"...Romulans."

The guilt was still his. The responsibility and blame was still his. Yet Sisko still said certain words.

"Damn, that felt good."

_**3**_

Having addressed Kirk's intrusiveness, Kira now asked Keiko for a spiritual favor.

"I'm not trying to convert you. But can you accept who the Prophets might be?"

It was painful for her to phrase it that way. They were who they were to her. But while Sisko spoke in the most respectful terms, much of Starfleet seemed at least awkward about the subject. Miles was certainly among them.

"I've had good instruction on allowing for all the wonders of eternity, Major. Especially those we can't completely understand."

"Let me guess. The Admiral, or his wife?"

"No. Saavik's adoptive father, Ambassador Spock."

Kira smiled, despite the tension.

"Was he all they say?"

"Peter Kirk once asked his Uncle Jim where he'd be without Spock. He replied : '_Organic debris floating in the wreckage of a footnoted Constitution-Class ship_.' The feelings went that deep."

As she made her initial chanting request before the Orb, Kira wondered, not for the first time, if Benjamin Sisko would ever say such a thing of her. As a light came up from the revered relic, Keiko whispered, well under her breath.

"Damn chronotrons. Always make my scalp itch..."

"Our child again seeks answers."

Kira was doubly silent. The Prophet who appeared before her was not only the first she had really seen, if in fact sight applied where she was, but it took the form of Kira Meru. The image turned to Kira's companion.

"This one is known to us. Touched by our foes against her will. Why do you travel with our child?"

Kira didn't know who to pray to, that Keiko would say the right thing.

"The repeated violation of your domains, conducted by one misguided and one your enemy, is of concern to those who stand with Bajor. That one is our enemy as well. For myself, I fear for my dear friends' family, for-"

Nerys nearly rolled her eyes. Now was not the time for her to be at a loss for words. But she quickly found them.

"The Seven. The Seven, and sometimes more than Seven. I fear he may try to do them harm, and change the path that brought the Sisko to you."

She was only trying to help. And this time, Kira felt, her old friend had succeeded. The Kira Meru Prophet gave at least a few pieces of good news.

"You may travel with our child, and stand with our child. Our debt to the Peter is greater than to most. The More Than Seven were not the concern of our foe. The Foe was permitted to walk our domains."

Kira then asked a question she would have skinned her companion alive for broaching.

"Why? How could you permit him, of all beings, to use your sacred power in his insanity?"

The Meru image did not scold or scowl just yet.

"His path now leads to the caves. We may not hinder this. The journey was part of his path, and the path to The Last."

Kira now had her mouth all but clamped shut. For she knew that the next words from her mouth would surely be blasphemous. Whether she had wanted Keiko there or not, she turned and gave her a look. Her next words were happily more respectful than those Nerys kept back.

"May we observe the path The Foe walked through your domains?"

"You may."

The light shifted around them, and Nerys swallowed hard as it did.

"Thank You."

"It's nothing. Talking fast on your feet is a prerequisite for parenthood."

_**4**_

Yet the pair once again stood back on DS9. Kira looked about her.

"Why did they send us back? Is this a test?"

Via the sudden, sometimes-undetectable quick matter transmit/receive system known to the Federation as the 'hyper-transporter', Gul Dukat appeared in the room with them. He sported a grin a sector wide.

"There you are. Oh, it's been a while-but you're looking as lovely as ever."

Keiko saw Kira do a yelling jump-kick at Dukat that would have had his head's integrity in question, under any other circumstance.

"I passed through him?"

Keiko nodded.

"They did only say we could observe."

Dukat walked over and stroked the Orb. Kira again fought down the kind of words one simply didn't use around the gods of creation. But it was a close fight.

"You're going to bounce me around eternity, my dear. So much more efficient than risking a star's gravity well, or messing around with a faulty Romulan cloaking device, don't you think?"

Noises came from outside. Dukat seemed pleased by this.

"My new friends are engaged with the Prophets as we speak. Meaning that not only are you physically unguarded, but also wide open. I wonder if their prediction about the Kai interfering will come to pass? No matter. Let's do what poor Arne gave so much to show us how to do, hmm? It would seem a shame to waste his lessons, along with everything else. Odd thing was-he still wouldn't tell me why the Klingons of his era looked so different, even under torture. Well, let's get down to it, shall we?"

Kira knew personally, and Keiko knew from Miles when this was occurring. The Prophets had chosen her as a surrogate to fight their battle against a Pagh-Wraith infested Jake Sisko. The Orb had been left behind under a cover story of its being in-transit to Bajor. The Jem'Hadar indeed attacked the convoy that supposedly had it. But Dukat had been informed otherwise, it seemed.

"By 'new friends'? Why am I not surprised? Was their part in the battle all so he could get to the Orb?"

Keiko still waited to see what was going on. Images of a shattered history swam before his vision.

"Nerys, he's doing something."

A man appeared before Dukat. His uniform was slightly different, as were his features. But it was clear who the visitor was.

"That's Dukat as he looked during the Occupation."

The younger Dukat looked no more pleased than Kira.

"Who-Where am I? I demand to know what's going on here!"

The elder Dukat stunned, and then dropped a commlink on his younger counterpart.

"Yes, that is something you would tend to do."

Both Dukats then disappeared, only to have the older Dukat appear again, minutes later, albeit in the younger man's clothes.

"A cloaked ship, some careful cryo-stasis, a change of clothes-well, a change back-and some quick plasti-laser facial tweaks, to take away a decade or two. Oh, I do hope I didn't cause myself any brain damage. That could lead to insanity."

Keiko spoke up at this point.

"This, as opposed to talking to yourself."

Dukat was in his glory. Kira was beginning to have a sick feeling of Deja Vu.

"Now, little Orb. Let's continue our good works. First, a view of things to come. After all, there has to be someone to forward our distraction, when the time is right."

The light flashed, and they all three stood before the Valiant tribunal. Collins was in the middle of her awkward testimony. Dukat looked at Kirk, overseeing events.

"Admiral! It would be you, wouldn't it? Both of us crushed by the foolish quest to meet up with a legend. You never will. But myself? I intend to end all legends, forever. So you'll be on my station? A little further scanning along the timeline and-"

Keiko watched as Dukat found what he was looking for, and recorded the message that was now made to predate Kirk's discovery of Dukat as Arvin's killer and his assignment to the tribunal.

"Sneaky bastard."

Kira was still torn inside by the thought that the Prophets had allowed this to go on. Dukat returned to the DS9 still torn by the battle of the great powers.

"And now for the dear, dear Major. Six to twelve weeks ago should do it."

Kira felt her heart sink still further. The new scene that played out came from a place she could not believe.

"He's in Captain Sisko's office?"

Activating protocols set up during two different occupations, Dukat kept a good many security systems from reporting his presence.

"Good. By the time all is done, all I'll be is an excuse for the ever-cautious Constable to open the lock files concerning the most secure room on the station."

The transmission he made was painfully familiar.

"Sorry...early...don't bother to try and locate where I'm...your mother's...yes I knew her...I assure you it is the truth, Major..."

The transmission was ended. Kira recalled Odo finding some of Dukat's long-hidden protocols not long thereafter, in the wake of the nerves raised by his taunting. Again he returned to the Deep Space Nine of his relative present. Keiko looked at an increasingly frozen Kira. She could only mutter a bare word.

"Madman."

Dukat moved again in front of the Orb.

"Actually, it isn't yet the truth, Major. But it will be."

Kira witnessed anew what Keiko saw for the first time. Dukat assuming his past self's place as Viceroy of Bajor, with Terok Nor as his base. Dukat taking a sudden interest in a Bajoran family, and particularly its striking matriarch. Kira saw herself, traveled back via the Orb to find out the truth about her mother, and being massively disturbed by it and her.

"Exactly as Dukat set me up to do."

The monster had known who she was all along, and he had played his role with psychotic perfection. Every inch of it had been part of his plan, even to this later viewing of it all. Kirk had been played as well, the past witness to a young man's disgrace soon to be a second-hand witness to the sick intricacies of his evil triumph. Yet upon his return to the present, he shrugged as though a detail were off in a treasured painting.

"I suppose some minor damage to the timeline was inevitable. But I'm certain my past self will make use of it. He was such a creative sort. Oh, I do hope the Admiral doesn't keep all this top secret. It would just ruin the final crescendo, wouldn't it?"

_**5**_

The younger Dukat was sent back, and the then-present-Dukat got off the station before the abortive battle of the gods was done. In their own present, Keiko watched Kira head for the door, opening it to find Kirk waiting, as he had promised. She relayed what she knew. Kira then looked at both the old man and her dear friend.

"He could have saved Ziyal, his own daughter. He could have exposed the Martok Changeling before Gowron ordered the invasion."

She roared in near-agony, tears falling unbidden from her eyes.

_"I WOULD HAVE EVEN UNDERSTOOD IF HE HAD GIVEN CARDASSIAN FORCES INFORMATION TO DEFEAT THE FEDERATION!_ At least that would have been comprehensible. But what in the sight of the Prophets was this?"

Kirk wanted to say that Dukat was a petty man, who would likely meet a petty end, grasping at perceived power and glory as he fell. But a much harsher truth escaped his lips.

"I'll keep my silence on the details of this. Otherwise, I have nothing for you."

Kira shook her head.

"Yes, you do. Help Keiko take me to my quarters. A young man I consider my friend is making a speech in this shrine in a few hours. A speech of penance, such as I will never hear certain people make. I want to be here for him. So guide me to my quarters, because right now, I just can't see straight, or stand completely on my own. Will you do this, Admiral?"

"Of course."

Keiko whispered to her one-time host, a man she gladly called Uncle in private.

"Peter-Oji-Chan? Not a single word, alright?"

Kirk just nodded, and perhaps looked glad to be retired as he aided the two young women.


	9. Part Eight

Part Eight

_**1**_

Nog stood before the Bajoran Mass, its required rituals now completed. He had a full house, even to the Romulan Travek. Jake was seated in front, just as he had hoped.

"Now, if I can just keep from screwing this up."

Nog began his words when Admiral Kirk was at last seated.

"I'll just start out by apologizing to all Bajorans for taking your beliefs in vain and in such a crass manner. I think I can honestly say I must have been out of my mind. But I can guarantee you it won't happen again. See, my very beautiful stepmother Leeta has sponsored me for Fortification Classes. I'll be the oldest one in there-most Bajorans are fortified by the age of ten-which you know, so why am I telling-sorry. At least the next time I say something stupid, I'll have enough knowledge of Bajoran faith to avoid sounding ignorant as well. I'm not adopting your faith, but I will stand as a member of this congregation. So I guess I'll be around to do odd jobs, if you need me. I don't have enough words to say how really sorry I am. And what makes it even worse is, I may have done irreparable harm to the best thing that ever happened to me. Better even than this uniform I wear with pride."

He didn't point to Jake, but he did meet his gaze without flinching.

"At the Academy, some of my fellow cadets questioned how it was, so short a time after they initially met, that Ambassador Spock and Admiral Kirk's uncle came to describe themselves as brothers. But I never did. Because I have someone just like that-or at least I used to. Your faith tells that the Prophets gave Bajorans the ability to read and write. Well, I was given those abilities by the son of your Emissary. And when I wanted to join Starfleet and Captain Sisko thought it was maybe a scam or a joke, it was Jake who assured him that I was very serious about it. And so on. He is the best friend I have ever had, and when the time came that I should have listened to him, I instead joined in on a fool's errand. And when the time came to tell him he was right to have been concerned about Cadet Watters, I instead spouted off that he should somehow make that disaster into a heroic epic. And finally, when he obeyed the first duty of both a reporter and a Starfleet officer and told the truth of what happened, I ran up and down the station and I called my best friend a liar."

Jake's eyes seemed to almost be saying that Nog didn't have to go this far. But he ignored this.

"What's worst of all is, this isn't the first time this sort of thing has happened. For you see, when I was a small boy, I betrayed my father Rom, just the way I betrayed Jake."

The young Ferengi then began a story which very few knew of.

"Her name is Prinadora. Likely you've never heard of her. She's the female who gave birth to me. I call her that, not because of any Ferengi beliefs on women's status, but because of my feelings about her. My bitter feelings. And make no mistake, by the standards of my people, Prinadora and her family are much better Ferengi than me and my father's family could ever be. No visits from the FCA. No rebellions, or attempts at social change. A sense of profit and how to always make it. No need to quote the Rules Of Acquisition. Why would they? They never lack for latinum. Funny thing is, though, they're not admired. Feared, somewhat respected, and given all the deference latinum can buy you, and that's quite a bit. But most people have learned not to deal with them. Because, even by the standards of my people, where economics is truly a spiritual end unto itself, they are called cold and ruthless, and again, not in admiration."

Jake knew at least part of this. He would still be stunned by what was soon to follow.

"A year after I was born, my father discovered that he was in love with the woman contracted to give him a child. When he offered to extend the contract, Prinadora called in her father. Picture a Zek who doesn't laugh much. Except behind your back. He told my father what it would take to extend the marriage past its expiration point. How Prinadora had to be assured of a future, and compensated for what his family could have made by–sorry–by farming her out to have another child in her prime bearing years. Well, my father was in love, and he understood the need to compensate those potential losses. So he entered into a contract another man would likely have not signed off on, even if his intent had been to give away most of his earnings. My father was convinced that, given another contract period, she would fall in love with him, too. Whatever the contract didn't give her outright, he spent in lavishing gifts on her. I was still a toddler, but I remember the other children always laughing about something when they saw my parents together. That was when I first began to figure out that maybe my family wasn't all that highly regarded. I had no idea."

"The contract expired, and she left him, most of his money in the hands of her family. She found a richer man, and so me and my father no longer even qualified as afterthoughts. Yet while he was devastated, my father was determined to not be a joke on his own world. So he used the skills he's always had to start tinkering with and fixing things. I was proud of him. Eventually, we were able to move out of Moogie's house. I don't care what Ferengi laws at the time said–it's always been her house. People turned to the man they knew could get their machinery working again. He was preparing to expand again when Prinadora showed up again. She said she wanted to start over."

It was very, very evident that Nog wanted no such thing, now or then.

"I called my uncle, who said he would find the bribe money to get out of Cardassian space to prevent my father from again ruining his life. Moogie said she had a special knife set aside for Prinadora's neck, should she ever try this."

Nog smiled.

"But my father surprised us all. He let her rub his lobes and his ego-I think they might have even spent a night together. Then-he kicked her out, and told her father where they both could go. The problem is, certain Ferengi are more Ferengi than others."

The smile faded.

"Prinadora next contacted me, and invited me to her father's home, with all fees waived. My father said I should accept, but I was curious anyway. The place was a mansion. I had never seen anything like it. Some cousins I had never met showed me the ins and outs of the family business. I had access to luxuries I didn't know existed. I quickly stopped questioning how the family made its latinum. Then, when Prinadora asked me to stay-I just melted inside. My grandfather talked to me about the best schools and most attractive females being all mine. One very nice-looking female cousin even made eyes at me. So I told my father I was leaving."

Nog gulped.

"He emerged from inside that palatial home and told me I wasn't leaving. That I was the only thing in the galaxy he really cared about. I told him not to screw up a good thing for me. I told him how I was tired of living in small, cramped homes and never seeing him for all the work he had to do. I told him that he was a failure, and that he was trying to ensure that I became one as well. So I told him to go away, and tried to reenter the house I thought was mine. One of my oh-so friendly cousins pushed me back out."

Even for those who felt they knew where this lead, it was a harrowing narrative.

"He told me that, having gotten what they wanted, I was no longer welcome, nor was I to be seen near that house, for any fee. My father had signed away all the profits he had built up in exchange for a contract to have them leave me alone. That is what they had been after all along. I never mattered to them. I was a source of latinum-and probably a source of amusement as well. I tried to thank my father and apologize to him. But he wouldn't let anyone-even Uncle or Moogie-speak of it for years. He could take being a fool for love. But he couldn't take being betrayed. Worst of all, I had given away my heart to people who didn't have any, and hurt the only person who had ever cared about me. I mean, I hurt him badly."

Nog tried to conclude, but it was hard.

"We got off Ferenginar, then. Moved here. My father stopped trying. My betrayal made him give up on improving himself for years. But eventually, I gained a best friend who cared about me, and it seems like I waited only a few years before throwing him over for a group of people who wanted to use me. So you see-what I did to Jake wasn't new. It's just what I do, when I stop thinking. I hope maybe one day, the people assembled here can forgive me the way my father finally did. That's all I have. Just a blind spot I thought I was past-and I wasn't."

Nog moved away from the speaker's place as Admiral Kirk moved towards it. Kirk whispered something to the much younger man.

"Ensign-you're a tough act to follow."

_**2**_

If the Admiral had previously seemed almost at home on DS9, he now seemed very much an anxious visitor. Captain Sisko did note that the presence of the Romulan Travek seemed to play little or no part in this. A look from Travek and then a nod said that his findings on the Admiral's fate had come to a conclusion.

"I am here today to accept your world's medal of peace. You good people changed your minds about my decision to pull Starfleet forces out of this sector. It was a painful choice, more so than anyone except my wife and bondmate could ever understand. See, I once knew a man who, I remain convinced more through love than sense, could have defeated the Cardassians and freed your world, then and there. They've told me never to compare myself to my uncle, but that's a bit like ignoring the sun in the morning sky. It's there, whether you say it is or not. But the only times I have ever progressed in my life were when I just accepted that the sun was there, and was grateful for it. If I had any sage advice for Bajor, it would be to stop letting the memory of the Ancients dominate what you think you should be. Your path is not theirs."

Kirk then flashed a bit of the genetic trademark smile.

"That is, I would offer such advice, were I honestly arrogant enough to try and presume to advise a whole world."

If anyone had thought the prior advice presumptuous, they were now lightly chuckling along with almost everyone else present.

"Besides getting people upset with you, such presumption has another downside. You quickly learn that, however powerful and wise you think you are, you can't help everyone. So indulge me now as I follow in Ensign Nog's path and do a bit of expiation. I figure this might be the proper place for it."

Perhaps some had expected some hollow words of acceptance from the older man, regarding his medal. Yet now, he certainly had everyone's interest.

"An acquaintance-a decent sort of person, but not one I know nearly well enough to call a friend- recently found themselves on the receiving end of what I can only call a vicious, pointless prank. It was a lot more than a prank, mind you, but in using that word, I speak not about the action itself but about the puerile mentality of the so-called sentient that perpetrated this. And I will call it for puerile, for not only did this monstrous prankster do what they did, but they even had the nerve to show how they had accomplished it. Suffice it to say that they used something that could have performed miracles, and instead used it as a child would a marker upon a wall they've been told not to draw on."

Kirk nodded grimly, as he continued the disguised tale. Kira almost bristled, to see the report she had given out of respect used this way, but picked up on a sincerity that calmed her worst reflexes.

"As a former intelligence officer, I've swam and drowned in lies. Yet a vicious trick and its follow-through struck even me as a new low. The only gain was to the trickster's unrestrained ego. And as talkative as some people tell me I am, I find at this time I had no words of comfort for my acquaintance. Well, I may see this person again sometime soon, so I thought I'd tell all of you what I have to say first. As with so many things in my life, it goes back to a lesson my uncle taught me. It concerned a man named Khan Noonien Singh, and the ultimate effects of his evil."

Kira watched and waited, allowing what the old man was doing for the moment. But she would let him have it, she swore, were he to directly or indirectly identify her even once.

"My lovely, wonderful wife wasn't always mine. Her first bondmate was my cousin, Doctor David Marcus, slain on the Genesis Planet on the order of Captain Kruge, a Klingon who not only had no honor, but who seemed to have never heard the word. Saavik was grieving David when I first met her, and it was some years before she allowed me to help her dry those unseen tears. I was furious at Kruge, slain by my uncle in single combat, to be certain. But I reserved my real rage for the man whose actions had created the Genesis planet."

Miles O'Brien sat with Keiko, and wondered what lengths he would go to in order to dry her tears. It wasn't an entirely pleasant train of thought.

"I asked my uncle about the very concept of cosmic justice. I asked how God or fate or any positive power under Creation's gaze could allow a lunatic like Khan the opportunity to steal a supremely powerful device like Genesis. A power to rival creation itself. Jim saw the question for what it was. A young man who'd lost his brothers years before was asking why the cousin he'd only known for a few weeks was so suddenly and savagely taken from him. But bless him always, Jim did not dismiss the question. Instead, he sat for a while and thought about it."

The medal that had brought him there had been all but forgotten, and the basic faith Kirk spoke of was not shared by most in that room. Yet no one was raising objection, and no one seemed likely to do so as he continued.

"When he was done, Jim asked me not to see Genesis as this fantastic find that Khan had lucked into. Instead, he bid me consider what Genesis had ultimately cost Khan. For he and his genetic supermen were free. Whether they conquered worlds or just found their Eden, they could have been well underway before anyone ever knew they escaped. Yet Khan learned of Genesis when he stole the USS Reliant, and now he had the means to destroy my uncle. Though not as powerful as today's similarly-designed Soyuz Class, the Miranda Class Reliant was a tough little starship. As my uncle learned, it could do serious damage to even the venerable Constitution Class quite easily. But now Khan had Genesis. So instead of getting so far away he could never be caught, he turned to punish my uncle for crimes slightly real and mostly imagined."

"This is what finished him. If not for Genesis and the possibilities it stirred up in that wicked brilliant mind of his, Khan might have decided to escape and wait to strike my uncle, if ever. So Project Genesis was not a winning lottery ticket thrown down to him by a Power with a twisted sense of humor. It was his own death warrant, and he proved all too eager to sign it. So it is that I will tell my acquaintance when next we meet that the trickster will meet a burning end like that of Khan, and likely will be just as disbelieving that the end has come. The find that enabled them to actualize their deception may well have been fate's way of putting a marker on this fiend. Fate, God-or The Prophets. There is good in the universe, and it moves to trick haughty evil into doing itself in. It just takes time and patience, something we mortals are not known for-at least not this mortal. Thank You for hearing me, and thank you for making me so welcome, on your station and on your beautiful world."

_**3**_

After some final entreaties to the Prophets, the mass was done, and Kira spoke with Keiko, a smiling nod to Kirk as he went to see Sisko and the Romulan Travek.

"He doesn't stop trying, does he?"

"Not in his nature, Nerys. I only wish it helped."

She shook her head.

"He got me. Knowing his nature and the nature of time-travel, I should have guessed what he did had another level. I do wonder about myself, though, forever thinking for one second that he could change, even under the most ideal of circumstances."

"You, Kira Nerys, are no fool. You gave him a final chance, and I expect, if you know anyone else like Gul Dukat, you'll give them that same last chance. Treasure that we live in a time and a place where such forgiveness is even an option."

Despite her anger over what Dukat had done, had indeed gone to insane lengths to do to her and to Meru, Kirk's miniature would-be sermon rang true in part. Dukat's efforts all had the feel of a vicious prank. As Keiko and Kira parted company, the Major wondered about how she would move to deny the prankster some aspect of his childish victory.

_**4**_

Sisko received the word that Travek was ready. Kirk was led into the CO's office, thankfully not manacled. Travek and his bodyguards followed closely, putting on the appearance of respect to the elderly Admiral, at least to Sisko's eyes. Travek then turned to his own security staff.

"Wait outside. If the Federation cannot or will not protect its honored allies, then the very basis of our relationship is a joke. Captain Sisko, I trust that your office is soundproofed?"

Ben was liking this man less with every minute.

"It can be."

"Swept for listening devices?"

"By both Constable Odo's staff and Starfleet Security-and do not disparage the Constable. That I will not allow, Travek."

"I will not disparage your shapeshifter, Captain. I hear that he is an honest man, after all. A rare thing nowadays, Hmm? You will opaque the bay and office windows before we enter, of course."

"Travek, you can just go straight to..."

Kirk looked at Sisko.

"Captain, please do as he says. I want this over with."

They entered the office, and Sisko entered the soundproofing, anti-bugging and window-tinting protocols, but he did not do it happily.

"After all that, Travek, you had damned well better have something on us."

"Actually, Captain, your honor on the mission in question is not an issue. From the beginning, I knew I would find exactly nothing."

"Then why the show?"

"To *show* my people that my efforts were sincere. So that we would be left alone, the better for me to do the following."

Travek then raised his right hand and spread his fingers in a familiar gesture that, while known to members of his basic species, was not widely used on Romulus. And never openly.

"Jolan Tru, Peter Kirk. I offer greetings from your wife's father on Romulus. He wishes you and his family well, and waits for the day his work will permit his return."

Kirk then raised his hand in the same gesture.

"Jolan Tru, Travek Ja'Spock-student of my wife's father, he who is brother to my father's brother. Peace And Long Life to you all, and Reunification when logic dictates."

"I will greet him in your name, Admiral."

"I will speak well to my wife, Saavik Cha'Spock, of the wisdom, tact and logic shown by her father's able student."

If Sisko was floored by Travek's secret, the Romulan's next words brought back a point he had almost forgotten.

"Captain Sisko-my government may find your actions useful for its purposes. But have no doubt that, were I able, I would arrest you on the spot. I cannot with honesty wish you well. I am done here."

When he had gone, Ben sat down.

"He knows. Admiral-I have something to confess. Something about how the Romulans came to join the Alliance."

Kirk looked at the much younger man with a touch of pity in his eyes.

"Ben-you don't need this old outsider. You have a station full of friends, one of those with many lifetimes of hard-won knowledge. Turn to them."

"Then you won't help me?"

Peter Kirk touched two fingers to his forehead, saluting the Captain as he began to transport out to a waiting ship, to take him to his family and academic duties.

"Mister Sisko, I just did."

For five minutes, the Emissary of The Prophets sat alone. Finally, he did what Kirk suggested.

"Sisko to Dax. Old Man-I need you."

_**5**_

Nog looked at his best friend.

"But what is there still to settle? Didn't I make it clear that..."

Jake pulled out the replicated tacos, and bid the Ferengi sit down.

"Ensign-let's talk."

_**6**_

Kira finished telling her tale.

"You've both been subject to every trick in the book and then some. How do I keep Dukat from gloating over what he did?"

Keiko saw Miles get the cheese and vegetables, mixed with some salami cubes, and then sit down with their dear friend.

"Major-let's talk."

_**7**_

*It feels like the retinas in my personality are detached*.

That was what the first man genetically enhanced said in the mid-20th Century. He too, had been a surgeon, and was disgusted by what had been done to him without his knowledge or permission.

"It's just a poor excuse."

Personality detachment. The feeling that your true self had been eaten by the process meant to raise you up. He would never tell anyone, not Miles, or Garak. It sounded so trite. The condescension, the snobbery, the sometimes disdain and dismissal of others. Julian knew of this, but also knew that he was a grown man, capable of reining it in if he so chose. That he didn't choose it often enough was his problem, not anyone else's, and not something to be explained away by convenient medical jargon.

"Except I don't keep it under control, do I? Not me. I just merrily slander senior Admirals and legendary figures. And what if he hadn't been?"

The truth was still as harsh as acid. But now, Julian again looked at the picture of a medical hero.

Bashir finally switched on the recording, and saw a wizened old man, a hero to every person who could hold a medical tricorder.

"_Julian, son-les you and me tawk_."


	10. Part Nine

Part Nine

_**1**_

"When I moved to bring the Romulans in to this war, I slid further and further down the moral slope, but I did so without regret. Now, all am I is regret."

Dax was silent as Sisko continued.

"As I went, everything seemed crystal clear. That the crystal in question was onyx meant nothing to me. Now, I wonder if I can even find the path back, or if there is one."

The man on point for so much of a tragic, bloody war seemed spent. In fact, it would only take one more death to truly push him over.

"And, Old Man? The only comfort I had was that only I and Garak knew about any of this. It was my sin. Yes, the Prophets could have riddled me into backing off, but they didn't. In a sick way, I felt almost proud to have a mistake that wasn't predicted in some Nostradamus-like quatrain. So much so, I almost didn't see it for what it was-a surrender of all I held dear. Or all that I used to, in any event."

Dax almost spoke, but correctly sensed that Sisko wasn't quite done yet.

"Yet now, everyone, from Admiral Nechayev to the Romulan consul and for all I know, Morn and that fat Klingon restaurateur, seem to know every last line I crossed, every head I lopped off, every t crossed and every i dotted. It's not in Garak to even speak about missions long ago, except in vague, glossed over terms. Yet only he could have betrayed me. But why?"

Jadzia nodded.

"Well, I guess this is the part where the old rogue and heir of generations of supposed wisdom exudes platitudes, explains all the flaws in your reasoning, moral and logical, reminisce about my spouses for the umpteen-zillionth time, and then helps you to get yourself off the hook, at least for those things you can be let off for."

The humor in her voice evaporated.

"But understand this, Captain-you betrayed yourself, first and foremost. I have enough blood on my hands-most of it by my direct actions, mind you-to know that is where the betrayal always begins, and where it always ends. So before I explain what you didn't know, and force you to rethink what you thought you knew, and remind you of what you already know, know this truth beyond all others."

There was no 'channeling' here. This was Dax, the one cursed by enemies and sometimes by friends, when it came down to the hard choices, and the hard truths.

"You never really get to undo your own evil. Especially not the evil you choose with open eyes."

_**2**_

Nog still tried his best to reason out what further items he and Jake had to settle. Jake allowed this, for what he had to say in the end had surprised him when thought of, as much as it would surprise Nog to hear it.

"You're-you're still upset about my throwing you over for a group of arrogant Starfleet cadets."

Jake shook his head.

"The same thing could have easily happened, with me and a bunch of stuck-up writers. Trust me, it probably will at some point."

Nog again made a stab.

"I called you a liar."

"You never meant it. It was because I told the truth that you needed to call it a lie. It hurt your pride to have fallen so hard for Watters' pumped-up rhetoric. All that aside, you've apologized for that a few times now. And I accepted it. I still do."

Nog stopped trying for a moment and instead asked a question.

"Why didn't you include Red Squad's bigoted remarks in your article?"

"For the same reason I didn't include Chief O'Brien's conjecture about why we encountered Red Squad when we did."

"But how does that go to journalistic standards? You were there. You heard them make those remarks. So did Dorian."

Jake took a bite of pizza, then sat down.

"Nog, we never knew those people. Never really knew them, anyway. When we met up with Red Squad, they were drugged-up, sleep-deprived, delusional, hell-bent on leather, and only days away from meeting a final fate that I hope no one ever sees as anything but a tragedy. It's possible that the people they really were would never have dreamed of making those kind of hateful remarks."

"But you don't know that."

"Right. I don't know it either way. So it didn't go in the article."

Nog wasn't buying this. Technically, he also didn't buy Admiral Kirk's argument about why he should have taken command of the Valiant, but since the man had spared his lobes, so to speak, that one he let go entirely.

"What-about Dorian? She was there. She knew them at least through that entire mission."

"Dorian felt she was an unreliable witness in that regard, since she only saw them when they were basically begging for their next hypo spray. I agreed."

Nog waved his hand in the air.

"But-but you both-you both-"

Jake gave the nervous young man some water, and then waited for him to breathe.

"Thanks. But you both testified to those remarks at the hearing."

"Nog, you know as well as I do that Starfleet's standards at such a hearing are based upon ancient tenets of the uniform code of military justice on Terra and other worlds. And under those standards, hearsay evidence can sometimes be used."

"Wait. I know for a fact that some reporters use things that almost don't qualify even as hearsay in writing a story."

Now, Jake did look a little upset.

"And some Starfleet officers falsify records and commit atrocities. But I would never call them examples of good or honorable officers."

"In other words-everybody has their bums."

Jake smiled, just a bit.

"Not in other words. I kind of like those."

"So what do we still have to settle? What's left that you have to forgive me for?"

Jake nodded. The time for games was over.

"When you first told me you were planning to join Starfleet, I wasn't instantly supportive. I wondered aloud if it was a scam."

"You got behind me pretty quickly after that."

"Because I realized that it meant everything to you. Because I realized how narrow and elitist I was being towards Starfleet life, and how presumptuous I was to assume that what was true for me was by definition true for my best friend."

Nog was now truly confused.

"Jake, any attitude you might have had you've more than made up for, particularly as regards me. No one has been more vital to my wearing this uniform than you. If what we have left to settle is your guilt over not understanding me at first, then forget it! I didn't understand this choice completely at first, either. I certainly didn't get what it would all end up being or meaning. Odds are, I still don't."

"It's not guilt, Nog. I'm glad I had to grow up on all that. It's helped me as a writer, and as a man. And it's not what I have to let go of as regards your actions. It's what I need you to let go as regards mine."

Sisko looked his best friend in the eyes. His words cleared up nothing at all.

"Nog, you have to stop resenting me."

_**3**_

"_First things first, Julian. Forgive our Petey his bull elephant nature. Lord only knows who he gets that from_."

There was a smile on the face of the much older man, showing that he knew full well where Kirk's approach to things came from. The recording was sent by an icon Bashir had never met and never would, and it was a few years old as well. Yet something of Leonard McCoy made everything seem very personal, as though he couldn't help it.

"He sent me a message. HE-sent me-me of all people-a message."

That message continued.

"_Anyway, a while back, it seems Petey is watching this one Cadet, and suspects him of cheating. Sees him forever changing the answers on his tests. So when he sets up surveillance for a possible disciplinary hearing, what does he see instead? The first set of answers the young man puts up-are always nearly perfect. Errors next to never. No, our cadet is changing the answers so that they are just a few shades away from perfect. Sometimes, he lets it be. Other times, he really lets his grade go. Most times, he keeps it down from 100 percent jus' enough so that he's not acing every single one ad nauseam. Damn suspicious. Like that boy wanted to be seen as less than what he was. Now, Julian-jes who do you think Petey had his eyes on_?"

Bashir knew.

"Damn."

_**4**_

Keiko did not follow her friend's line of reasoning.

"What do you mean, he 'got' you? Dukat violates your mother, and you treat it like some kind of childish prank?"

Kira tried to explain herself.

"Keiko, if I let Dukat's actions enrage me to the point of distraction, I'll only be setting myself up for his next game, whatever it is. So treating it like the Admiral said-as the vicious trick of a stupid little boy trying to impress his dead, brow-beating father-is the only rational way to deal with it all."

Miles stated the obvious but likely necessary corollary to her words.

"He's not done with you yet."

"Chief, I'd be really shocked if he were. He needs me, for some reason. He needs to impress me. Well, me and the Captain. He needs it so badly, it's actually eating away at the man we knew. Not just the glimmer of possible redemption we saw rise then sink away forever, but even the foe we could respect. He's a shell of rage, now, and soon, even that will leave him empty."

Miles wasn't having part of this.

"Do you honestly believe that a man who blithely condemned so many to death over the years could ever be redeemed, even partially, under any circumstances?"

"Yes, Chief, I do."

"Why?"

"Because I have to."

Miles took in the meaning of those words before responding. He tapped the center of his chest.

"Lady, you have faith where it counts."

Kira smiled. If there were two to who she could safely unburden herself, she sat before them now.

"Chief, the feeling is mutual. The way you two have held on through all this sometimes astounds me."

Keiko nodded.

"The way I see it, Nerys? We met and married in large part because the instigator of the Second Eugenics War eventually gave up on humanity and directed his descendants to create artificial life. I survived my first childbirth because a Klingon attorney who lost his most notable case decided to settle on a world on which his namesake grandson was one of the only survivors of a massacre. My second child is alive because a woman who was manipulated by a scheming Gul had a daughter who didn't even want us around until she saw a Bajoran even more resentful betray my husband's trust."

Miles took his wife's hand.

"And that's not even adding in all the possessions, doppelgangers, and illusory memories. Or the fact that, of the two most influential commanding officers in our lives, one almost became a vintner, and one wanted to stay a ship-builder. It's hard not to see ourselves as blessed. Not that any of this helps you with Dukat."

Kira felt weary.

"It does and it doesn't. It does for obvious reasons. It doesn't, because Dukat was blessed, and just never saw it. He survived some very determined efforts to kill him from all sides. He somehow started to gain the respect of people who should have hated him. He had a daughter who adored him, and I'm sorry, he could have gotten back his family and his position in time without the Dominion. But every time he suffered any kind of loss, it was back to type, or perhaps stereotype. There used to be a joke that the Cardassians were the Prophets' first chosen people, but when they stood up to be blessed, they kept elbowing each other to get in front. They did this for so long, the Prophets lost patience with them and chose Bajor instead."

She would later add how that joke was both apocryphal and somewhat blasphemous in certain circles, but the gist was easily understood.

"So what do I do at our next encounter, in order to deny him the triumph of gloating over a scheme involving my mother and time-travel?"

The O'Briens would be a while in answering the bearer of their child.

_**5**_

Dax's gaze was that of a formidable Academy professor (was there any other kind?) Sisko had encountered as a very raw Cadet, but her tone had shifted just a bit downward, becoming not gentle but at least not harsh, either.

"The first mistake the leader in a conspiracy usually makes is to assume that what they're plotting is completely their own idea. Now, by that, I don't mean you were brainwashed, given a vision, or anything like that. But getting the Romulans into the war by any and all means was not your independent notion."

"Of course not. It was the goal of all the leaders of the Federation, and likely the Klingons as well. And yes, I was pressed to find an argument or other means to persuade the Romulans to join the Alliance. But surely sanction alone can't make my actions sanctified?"

Jadzia Dax shook her head.

"Nothing can do that, Ben. The blood on the hands of all those named Dax is still on mine. The choices they should never have made, still on my conscience."

"Yet you'd do it all again."

Dax didn't answer this. Instead, she moved on.

"Two people plotted your conspiracy. Only two of them are still alive, and both have kept silent on it in every detail."

"No. Obviously, Garak told someone."

"Really? Are you assuming that, for someone outside to know, either of you had to speak to anyone else?"

Sisko didn't like the implications of that one bit.

"Am I under that kind of surveillance? Is that what you're telling me? Did Kirk say something to you?"

"Well, I can't speak for Starfleet Intelligence, and I certainly can't speak for any of the other allied services. At least not as concerns you, Ben. But my best guess is that I doubt it. Your movements are so public, any spies would be better off catching a daily news recap than attempting to plant bugging equipment that could be found out. But I can speak for all concerned, enemy and ally both, about the certainty of the second party to your conspiracy always being under the closest possible scrutiny."

Sisko felt momentary confusion.

"But Garak was out of the Obsidian Order long before the Dominion even showed up."

Dax counted off.

"Elim Garak is : A former spy, a profession not known for ever truly leaving one's life. He was the publicly known heir and privately known son of the Cardassian Empire's greatest-if slightly overrated-spymaster. Even before the Dominion, he was one of twelve Cardassians known to legally live in or around Federation territory. He was there when almost the entire Obsidian Order and the Alpha Team of the Tal Shayar went down to dust. Ben, do I need to go on? You plotted in secret with the most watched man in three quadrants, and for all we know, the Borg keep an eye on him, to boot!"

Ben remembered a secret rendezvous with Jennifer in Starfleet Headquarters' famed Clear Tower. They were on its utmost top floor, and well out of sight, so they did as a young couple did. Only later did they realize that, despite its height, the hills of San Francisco conspired with shifting sunlight to make them the snickering talk of everyone who boarded a trolley shuttle that afternoon.

"I might as well have handed my secret logs to Jake."

Who, it should be noted, was conceived that same afternoon, as the embarrassed passionate couple hurriedly ended their lovemaking. But Sisko had another question.

"Old Man, you said the Alpha Team of the Tal Shayar. I don't understand."

She chuckled.

"You want understanding? Our visiting Kirk is married to a half-Romulan, Ben, and even Saavik has no clue about them at times. So here's something to help you understand. Six months or less after Tain's debacle in the Gamma Quadrant, Cardassia had the Detapa Council. So given that Tal Shayar losses were equally ferocious, why wasn't there a similar shift in Romulan society?"

"I-I never really thought about it. I guess I thought it was that Romulans have a much longer history of repression of personal freedoms. Elderly Cardassians alive today may still remember pre-military rule, before the economic disasters that struck them in the 2290's."

"True enough. But remember, Romulans always use a layered approach. When those Tal Shayar agents went out to kill the Founders, they already had their perfectly trained replacements lined up, all the same ages, from the same intelligence academies, and given the same assignments to work on. Romulans always use a layered approach. Like when they tricked you into getting them into this war."

To say that Ben's eyes went wide at these words was a huge understatement.

_**6**_

Nog found his reconciliation with Jake at a standstill. The words spoken were simply too odd to be taken in easily.

"What do you mean, resenting you? I thought this was about you forgiving me for all that went on, during and after the Valiant."

Jake had thought all this out, and was prepared to stand his ground.

"No. Obviously, this all goes a lot deeper. After the Dominion warship went down, I realized that how you went at me couldn't just be about some high-strung cadets, our views on dating, or even personal discipline. I'm really surprised it took me as long as it did to catch on."

"Oh? And just what quasi-mystical insight did you stumble into?"

"Nog, I always thought it was all on me. That I was so thrown by the fact you chose the career path I didn't, that maybe I was seeing conflict where none existed. But while the conflict was real, I wasn't the one pushing it. I still couldn't figure out what you resented, though, till I finally put my ego aside once again, and realized the truth."

"Which is?"

"I dealt pretty early on with the fact that you weren't going to do like I did, in not joining Starfleet. I dealt with it with so completely, it never once hit me that the inverse was true. Nog, you resent me for not joining Starfleet when you did. You thought somehow that I would reconsider my choice based on yours."

Nog took this in for a moment.

"Is that it? That's your big revelation? That's what you agonized over, and by extension had me agonizing over? Jake, that's stupid! That sounds like something a writer would come up with."

"I am a writer."

"Then come up with a better one, because that little plot twist stinks. Just how is it that I resent you for not joining Starfleet, yet have never once mentioned it?"

Jake folded his arms.

"Until just today, how much of your history with your mother did I know? Huh? Ten percent? Maybe twenty-five? Until you wanted to join Starfleet, how much did any of us know about you wanting to not end up like Rom did, endlessly trying to please a society that already had you labeled? You're not always the most open person, Nog."

"It's still the most preposterous single theory I've ever heard. And don't fold your arms and glare at me, Jake Sisko. You look and sound like a caricature super-female from those absurd early 21st century hu-mon sitcoms. The ones where all the males act like a poor man's Zek."

Jake wondered for a moment why everyone he knew was so focused on Earth's 20th and 21st Centuries, but then let it go.

"Are you saying that I'm wrong?"

"Who needs to say it? You're so obviously wrong, it's pathetic. Just like your argument."

"Then you're good with my not joining Starfleet?"

Nog shrugged.

"It was your choice."

"That wasn't what I asked."

"Well...what does it really matter what I think?"

"Because you're my best friend."

Nog realized he had made a slight, inadvertent concession, and tried to back out.

"Ok. Do I think that you might in fact do very well in Starfleet? Yes. But I don't see where you get this resentment nonsense from."

"Keep going."

Nog did, telling himself he was listing facts against Jake's wild theory.

"You have a lack of discipline, but so do half the cadets that go in there. No one is ever prepared for what they ask. You have a brilliant, creative mind. You can create scenarios that a good Captain could make use of, and you think on your feet. Where you saw yourself blindly running from Doctor Bashir and then the Klingons, I see a man who survived and did manage to trick out a victory. You can't judge your courage by that first taste of combat. No one knows what it will be like. I sure didn't."

Jake held off refuting a single word.

"I'm still listening."

"I'll bet you are. Well, listen to this : You'd make a great officer. You may not think so, but it's in you. You'd be out there–we'd be out there–and you'd be breaking all the puzzles that space has to offer us. You'd be an explorer, finding life and living it, instead of...instead of..."

"Instead of what, Nog?"

Nog was now seething, the success of his friend's trap all too apparent.

"Writers don't live life. They observe it. Because they're afraid of it. And I am sick and tired of facing and dealing with what's out there alone, all because my supposed best friend was so fearful of the unknown he himself doesn't create, he has to hide behind a stylus and a PADD. Would it kill you to join me, and see what life is like when you can't control the outcome?"

There are words that, once said, can never be taken back. Nog had just spoken such words.

_**7**_

McCoy's message continued.

"_The odd thing is, Petey did not use his vast network of spy contacts, or like that. He just used simple detective work. I swear, that Vulcan was a bad influence on the boy. Your daddy had covered his tracks after y'all relocated. Problem is, when you cover your tracks, unless you're careful about it–you leave more tracks behind. In short, your daddy wasn't as clever as he thought_."

Julian chuckled.

"There's a shock and surprise."

"_Now, of course, there were no records saying 'Julian got enhanced.' But what the boy did was, once he found out where you used to live, he found the one thing no computer virus or bribed official on the school board's computer network could erase–paper records. We still keep em on occasion, ya know_."

Bashir shook his head.

"Well, I know that 31 didn't recruit me based on my father's stealth prowess. Paper records, Dad. You couldn't think to get those?"

It had all been so easy, for Kirk to put Bashir's past together. All it took was a similar secret plus a detective's eye. His facade, so practiced and kept up even during events like the virtual invasion of his mind by the assassin Altovar, now looked in retrospect fragile and almost waiting for the Zimmermans of creation to undo it.

"_Should he have turned you in? That's what the rules say, and despite what you might hear about it, Kirks don't go around the rules just for no reason. But back in the god-awful world of covert this and covert that, Petey had been forced to play judge for a lot of people. Bein' in command is one thing. But I guess judgin whether a young man's career should end wasn't in him anymore, so he turned to me. I know somethin bout doctors and would-be doctors, as you might imagine_."

_**8**_

"How? How did I play into the Romulans' hands? They didn't want to be part of this war. They did everything in their power to stay neutral. It was only my actions that finally brought them in."

Ben Sisko felt like had been weaned on puzzles for five years, and he was growing sick of it.

"Think, Ben. Don't rise suddenly from your desk and emote. Think. The Romulans never have merely one motive in doing anything, and it is very rarely the most obvious one, and its damned near never the one they state. Now, what would you label the Romulans' decision to seek neutrality from the Dominion?"

Sisko said what he had felt about this choice all along.

"Narrow short-term self-interest and fear, blinding them to the big picture. The Dominion would never tolerate even a weakened, contained Romulus, if it could rule them instead. Even a quasi-independent power could plot against them."

"Fine, Ben. Now take it to the next step. Why would the Romulans, deep plotters nonpareil, take so short-term an approach to their security and safety, as it concerned the Dominion?"

Sisko shook his head.

"I just said it. Fear motivated that choice."

Dax waved a hand in the air.

"Yes, fear. But why would the Romulans' specifically fear the Dominion, more than any of the other powers?"

This one at least, seemed to have a clear and easy answer for the Captain.

"They feared retaliation for throwing in with Tain's scheme to annihilate the Founders."

"True, Ben. But the Romulans had a lot more to fear from the Dominion than that. For what are the Romulans? Where do they stand in relation to their neighbors? Secretive. Massive and multiple concurrent schemes and plans, all deeply thought out. In short, the Romulan generically is a master thinker, a super-tough combatant, and a deceptive opponent who is known to use disguised agents, perhaps more than any other great power. Our late friend Mister Darvin, back in the day, was operated on by a Klingon surgeon named Mokrha. The man was greatly skilled–and he also wasn't born a Klingon."

Sisko saw it then.

"So the Romulans feared a power that was more like them than they themselves were. Truly uncaring about its combatants. Thinkers truly bred for no other purpose. True masters of instant disguise. Infiltration capabilities beyond anything we've ever guessed at. And–very well armed."

"Exactly. What could the Romulans do? They knew that, in a Dominion takeover, the Klingons could be made to give oaths that bound the worst of them to servitude. Humans could be manipulated any number of ways. Vulcans could be forced to remain insular without too much effort, relatively speaking. But Romulans? They, their people, and their culture would be wiped away on levels unimaginable."

"Because the Founders would never allow a power with like capabilities, even at a lower level, to continue existing."

Dax nodded.

"Why do you think this war turned around as far as it did when they joined? The Romulans don't merely bring ships and personnel. They bring a compact Dominion with them. But they had locked themselves in. The attempt to destroy the Founders was going to provide the Dominion the excuse they needed to be rid of their junior doppelganger, as it were. The neutrality agreement, I'm willing to bet, surprised the Female Founder and Weyoun as much as anyone. And while I don't have intelligence on this, I'm willing to go further and say that the Romulans had calculated that the Dominion was looking for an early declaration of neutrality from some power. As it turns out, they needed it so much, they shelved what could have been some major plans for a punitive strike."

"So the Romulans bought themselves some time. Time that they may well have needed more than any of us did. But in doing so, they had to know that the Dominion would never violate that neutrality agreement until their hold on the Alpha Quadrant was total. Then they'd still be facing the same sort of annihilation."

When the older being remained silent, Ben kept on.

"So they needed someone to trick them into declaring war on the Dominion. An outsider, driven to desperation. A man known to go around the rules. Jadzia, how deeply were their fingers in my back?"

"They weren't guiding you, Ben. But make no mistake, they were poking you."

"So I gave them the excuse they needed to fight the war they always wanted to fight. That they knew full well they would always need to fight. And if I were found out? Federation treachery would be a useful shield against reprisals. All so they can survive as a power."

Dax corrected him.

"And as a culture, Ben. You'd be surprised how many Romulan officials more greatly fear the erasure of their culture, than the deaths of all their worlds and people. They knew that in most scenarios, the Vulcans would provide a record of their lost cousins, should the worst occur. Even the Borg would keep the information in some fashion. But the Dominion just might fulfill their very worst fear. To die unmourned, and unremembered. To die–alone."

Sisko took in this new information.

"They are that fearful of just being forgotten?"

"So much so, that despite the Selas and Tomalaks of their creation, the decision has already been reached in some powerful quarters to let Spock roam unchecked. They know they have to open up. They just want it to be on their timetable, and with some semblance of their present power. Oh, they'd love to do galactic takeover, and they may well try six or seven more times before Reunification finally takes hold. But their odds-makers have told them to get on the right side of history. No matter how low they have to sink to do it."

"And what about me? What about how low I had to sink? They could poke me all they want, but short of the sort of mind-control they used aboard Enterprise some years ago, I still bear responsibility for the deaths I willed, and the deaths in the war that result from my plans. What do I do, Old Man? Tell me, just what the HELL do I do about that?"

His old friend laid a hand on Sisko's shoulder. Dax gave what she had, which wasn't much in this case.

"Ben–you're gonna carry that weight."

_**9**_

"All right. We think we have something."

The usual back-and-forth between the O'Briens, a gentle form of Terran gender play that Kira had noticed over the years, was gone. There were times when neither a man's simple determination nor a woman's simple understanding would bulldoze through a problem. That was when the phrase 'union of souls' became more than mere hopeful words in an oath.

"You have to understand, Nerys. Keiko and I aren't strategists. She's never really encountered Dukat up-close and personal, and I can't say my experiences with him have approached anything like those of yourself and Captain Sisko."

"Miles and I can hate the man for all he is, and the hurt he's placed upon the lives of people we care about. But we can never get at the ill feeling that drives him, or how it must twist inside you in turn."

"All I can say to that is : Thank the Prophets, Your God, and all your ancestors in that regard. I hope you two never truly have someone that you can only define as an enemy. It's not a good thing to have, on any level."

She gestured broadly at the two of them.

"But you two have such a diversity of experience. So many challenges that fall flat when up against your love for each other. With that love as a part of you, you can only prevail. Plots and possessions aside, you are no one's pawns."

Kira pointed to herself, almost contemptuously.

"Right now, I'm feeling a lot like something that Dukat created by violating time. He reached back and touched my very childhood. I may not even be the same person I was when..."

"Enough of that. Stop it."

"You're better than this."

They had spoken so closely, one after the other, that Kira briefly thought of how her own parents might have been, had there ever been a 'normal' day under the Occupation.

"But what do I do?"

Miles spoke with authority.

"First thing is, you cast off this professional victim nonsense. You're just who Dukat glommed onto in his madness, and yeah, his feelings of inadequacy."

Keiko spoke with a supreme matter of factness.

"Maybe the Prophets allowed this because you are strong enough to survive him. I'm sorry, Nerys. But he doesn't impress me. He thinks he's acting like a demon, but the truth is, his wicked satisfaction seems less like the devil, and more like Yoshi and Molly's, after they would soil diapers I had *just* changed."

"They liked to think we didn't know they did that on purpose."

Miles' smile seemed to help her, just a little.

"You can't compare the violation of my history to soiled diapers. I don't think whatever solution you used with the kids can aid me against a scheming lunatic."

Keiko grinned.

"Actually, that solution was our suggestion. See, we would ask and ask, in an exasperated voice, how could they do such a thing right after we had just cleaned them up?"

"Ummm..Isn't that errr function, mostly involuntary at that age?"

Miles nodded.

"You would think. But while infants may not know bladder control, they know games. And they know when they've won the game. It's a primal satisfaction. They initiated an action, and got a reaction. It's something they can't control at most times, but something if, they're on the borderline, they can make happen. Yeah, Julian insists we're wrong on this as well. But he's not a parent, either."

Keiko folded her hands together before speaking.

"Dukat is being claimed by his madness. He knows he can't stop it, any more than an infant with a full bladder could stop that. They know that eventually the choice won't be theirs, so they act in certain ways to release at a time of their choosing. It gives the infant and the madman the thing they both really want. Attention."

Kira was not hearing what she needed, or at least not yet.

"I'm sorry. Dukat wants a lot more than attention. Power. Reverence. Maybe even immortality, omniscience and for all I know, God-Hood."

Miles guided her back.

"Don't you see? What is power without those to hold it over, and bray about it? What is reverence if no one is looking in your direction? Or godhood, if no one sees you ascend and no one notices what a godly stud you are?"

Keiko started the solution.

"The next time you deal with Dukat, ignore him."

"Easier said than done."

"No. Not on whatever he's doing then. If I've listened to you and Miles correctly, he'll be onto his next plot or plan by then. No. When he asks you about Admiral Kirk's visit, just tell him you two never had time to chat."

Kira thought she saw the hole in this.

"He'll know I'm lying. He's a past master at the art. I can fool him to save a life or something serious, but not well enough to protect my own pride and ego."

"Nerys, I've seen you do it plenty of times at Ops."

"In fun, Miles. But dealing with Dukat's a far cry from deflating Julian or Quark."

"Nonsense. You're assigning that failed office-seeker god-hood, all on your own. And make no mistake, that's all any villain, even to the Devil himself, ever is. A failed office-seeker, spreading misery, because misery loves company. He's not omniscient, Nerys. He'll only know if you tell him. He may be able to tell you're lying. But he won't know for certain, and that will kill him. Once we started treating even the sudden extra diapering as just another chore and shut out exasperation or hints of exhaustion, the kids went on to other games. They lived and did fine. But Dukat? You will have ruined the grand finale to one of his most brilliant schemes. All because you denied him his certainty. Then, instead of his own ego-stroking inner voice, maybe he'll hear the disapproving voice of his father."

"So that's it? Deny him his certainty and I've won?"

Miles looked at his wife, and got a loving nod before touching his throat in an odd way.

"Tell me, Major. How is my father's old friend, Admiral Kirk? Is his large family doing well? I'd heard his youngest son had a mild case of Rigellian fever."

Kira started openly. The voice was not that of her enemy. But the tone and delivery had been absolutely spot-on. It provoked her. It made her want to tell him how slimy he was. How he could only get satisfaction by using time-travel to corrupt an innocent woman. But she said none of this.

"Admiral Kirk? Well, he really only spoke to Doctor Bashir, and they seemed to have some sort of argument. Why? Do you have the minutes of their chat, Dukat? Because I'm really not interested."

Miles got up, looking quite satisfied. Kira's delivery and faked sincerity would both get a little needed polishing. But she had gotten the basic point.

"Strange. I can't even really do that voice, but it still hurts my throat. Green Tea, ladies? I need either that or a lozenge."

As he went to fetch the beverages, Kira watched her friend with eyes she hadn't possessed since her pregnancy. Keiko saw this, and so dropped a bit of a bombshell.

"Planning on any trips together?"

Kira gulped.

"You knew?"

"I was–furious–at first. But then I realized that nothing had happened. Besides, after five pillows and a vase met their end, I decided that I couldn't really blame you for contemplating trying to steal the best."

Kira added on to that.

"From the best."

_**10**_

After a silence that was only three minutes but seemed hours instead, Jake looked at Nog, who had sat down after making his declaration.

"C'mon. You're not going to follow up on that?"

"Jake, leave me alone."

The young Ferengi had the look of someone who had tried to coordinate something extraordinary, be it a surprise party, practical joke, or romantic encounter, only to have it all fall back on him, an idiot who made his plans for no reason at all.

"Now what's wrong?"

"What's wrong? You ask me what's wrong? I just found out that I am exactly what some people have dismissed me as. An absurd, grasping little man who'd turn on the best friend he ever had, for no other reason than he chose to take his life on a different path."

Jake tried to pull back from the punch of what he'd said.

"Look, I can't say for certain how correct my theory is. It obviously has some truth, just in seeing how it's hit you. But don't let it dominate your thoughts. Nog, I do think that you have resented me for not changing my mind about a Starfleet career. But I don't think it's poisoned us beyond our ability to be friends."

Nog looked up at him, a bit of skepticism in his eyes.

"This from the man who felt our back-and-forth had become too costly to maintain anymore."

"Well, maybe I was a coward at that point. I didn't want to be hurt anymore, or hurt you. I don't know. The end of the trial seemed like a time to maybe make a clean break. It wasn't. Whether I'm a slob or not, our friendship isn't a neat and tidy thing. Maybe it wasn't meant to be."

Nog looked at Jake with a trace of panic in his face and voice.

"The friendship?"

Jake nervously shook his hands and head.

"No. No! The-the neat and tidy part."

Nog smiled, just a bit.

"Writer, Edit Thyself."

Jake chuckled. The frost was beginning to thaw.

"Always. Nog, I need to be a reporter. A writer. I'm not afraid of life. I am deathly afraid of seeing it go unrecorded, or unrecorded by an independent eye. I know all these incredible people, and I feel like, if I don't let everyone else know how really incredible they are, then I have failed in my duty. I can't figure out why else I was given this ability, and sent to live in and around people like Kira and all of you at a time in history like this one, if it wasn't to observe and record it all. And what I can't or won't deal with directly in my reporting, I can speak of in my fiction."

"Just so long as you ditch that one story about the son of the Saratoga's Captain. I mean, a vengeance-seeking Vulcan? What *were* you thinking?"

Jake turned this one right around.

"Sometimes, even the best of us get lost in what seemed like a good idea at the time."

"So where do we go from here?"

"Wherever we happen to end up. Together or separated, so long as we're always friends. I've accepted now that our lives are gonna pivot on each other, in some way, shape, or form, as long as we live. But it's not a bad thing. I honestly have no idea what I would have done, if I hadn't found you here, six years back."

Nog found this an acceptable statement/compliment.

"So where do you go from here?"

"Me? Well, despite certain lobed critics, I am still going to try and complete my story about Captain Esau Kidd and his feud with the unbalanced Vulcan Setek, son of Kidd's Vulcan captain aboard the Antietam, lost to the Mysterian attack at Dragon 460. Only now, Setek's quiet sabotage will be watched over by two young amateur detectives. Numegt, an atypical Ferengi youth, and Joel Kidd, Esau's son. Nobody believes them at first, but then they catch wind of Setek's plotting with a Bajoran renegade named Meena, who has duped veteran engineer Liam MacBoru..."

Nog broke into the effort at narrative.

"Keep digging. You and that plot are sure to reach Hell any time now."

Knowing well that it needed work, Jake nodded.

"But mostly, I plan to try and interview the families of the Valiant crew."

Nog looked very surprised to hear this.

"I take it all back. You do like to live. Dangerously. Suggestion, friend? Bring an armed escort."

"So where do you go from here, Ensign?"

"Chief O'Brien says that maybe they can re-establish the wormhole mine-field. In any event, if something happens to keep the wormhole from being a factor, the war will shift for a time. I intend to use that time, if it emerges, to take a month on Earth and record those holo vids for the Academy archive, concerning the Valiant. Admiral Kirk offered me a berth at his home–in exchange for babysitting duties."

"Back at the Academy–you'll be something of a celebrity, Mister Nog. Not just to the cadets, either. People are gonna wanna talk to the great hero."

Jake was not being sarcastic, and Nog's ego needed the much-appreciated stroking. But he had truly learned several harsh lessons.

"I'll just remind them of Brecht's Galileo : Unhappy is the land that needs a hero. Especially one like myself."

"Isn't there an ROA somewhere that says almost the same thing? Why quote a Terran like Brecht?"

"I like Brecht. He's deep. Plus, he created that 'Mack The Knife' character that Vic sings about."

Despite all pleas for solitude, the chime for their quarters sounded.

"An intervention?"

"Well, what have we got to fear? We've reconciled, right?"

"Right."

Having said that, Jake opened the door. It was Dorian Collins, holding a temp-sealed box that indicated pizza.

"I am sick and tired of being sick and tired. I've been as guilt-ridden and torn-up as I'm ever going to be. I want to have some unregulated dinner with friends, while I figure out whether or not to stay in Starfleet. Gentlemen, this pie is a dietary obscenity. Who's with me?"

The three survivors set up the table and began to eat way too much pizza and drink way too much root beer. The lost cadet crew of the USS Valiant remained the lost, for then and there.

Dorian.

"To taking responsibility and stepping up when and only when you are at least somewhat ready."

Nog.

"To not knowing everything, being over-eager, and disgustingly optimistic in the face of all-out war."

Jake.

"Here's–to being a kid."

That final toast was repeated, and three lives slowly moved out of the orbit of the ambitions of well-meaning but decidedly unprepared young officers who sought a tunic made of gold, only to find shrouds of red. They set out to be the subjects of one of the great stories, while forgetting that you never get to choose which of the great stories you're in, or the exact role you'll play in it. The greatest crisis of the evening occurred when the last slice with an appreciable amount of pepperoni was up for grabs.

Here's to being a kid. It only happens once, and its over far, far too soon. For most though, that once is more than enough.

_**11**_

The deceased legend's recording continued.

"_Now, what Petey asked me to help him with was a real dilemma. On the one hand, I've never been of the school that only the best should become doctors. This here is a profession needs all hands, so long as they're willing to work and know their limitations. If they don't know their limitations, they're not fit to be doctors_—"

Julian completed the joke with McCoy.

"...so we send them to Command School. God, that's a classic."

The old man grew very serious.

"_But on the other hand, I had two nasty run-ins with mankind's great effort to improve its genes. One of them very nearly cost me a man like my own brother. Ornery, obnoxious, stuck-up, pretentious and exasperating–but still a brother. I love that man, on those occasions I don't feel like strangling off the oxygen to his copper-based blood. Ah aided and abetted what I hope was their final destruction, and about this, I have almost no regrets_."

"Nor should you, sir."

Bashir found that he was responding to his hero, as though he was really there. If only, he wished. If only.

"_Where is that line, Doctah Bashir? Were my fears about Project Genesis that it would turn out to be the kind of unworkable disaster it did prove to be in the end? Or were they that the damned thing would work all too well, strung together as it was by the son of a lady super-genius and the most dangerous man that ever lived? Petey's a lot more capable than he lets on, but he ain't got hardly none of Jim's luck, and he got absolutely none of poor David's brains. Mind you, these brains was come by naturally. Though knowin' Jim as I do, the conception position was prolly decidedly unnatural_."

The old man almost made Julian smile, but the part about super-brains that were not enhanced kept that from happening.

"Well, no one ever said I was being made omniscient. Oh, I'm glad Miles didn't hear me say that."

"_Why do we fear a man like Julian Bashir? Do we think that every over-man, woman, and child is looking to rule the roost? 'Course they're not! Most folks is just folks, when you come right down to it. Some logs Uhura sneak-downloaded from Reliant fore she went up had one of Khan's men begging him to just find a better place than Ceti Alpha. Had the man been Marla McGivers, he mighta stood a chance in bringing Khan around. In any event, I don't worry about the next Khan coming out of those quacks' boilerplates. I worry that the fella or gal in question will be perfectly nice and perfectly content to help others, and maybe just plain perfect. But once we're all perfect, what's on top of perfect? If we keep running back to the Eugenics well, just who the hell are we really? Overnight is too quick for evolution, and I think the Good Lord and Lord Darwin would have no trouble agreeing on that point. Point to all that is, when I did my consideration, I feared not Julian the genetic conspirator, but rather Doctor Julian Bashir himself, the acceptable face of an unacceptable technology. Should I allow the exception to overrule the subject? If I do, and you are one day found out, do people now look to those hateful boiler-labs to remake their destinies? Was I going to unleash another Khan one or two hundred years from then, all to get one more really good doctor? I can tell ya right now–the sawbones who remade you mighta been competent, but he didn't ask no questions like these!_"

Bashir was not offended by these questions. Indeed, he could not possibly be offended by them, for they were questions he had asked of himself, nearly every day since he was first able to fully comprehend what he had become, and what that could come to mean. A quick read of the atrocities of one of Khan's rival over-men had been enough to deliver that message home.

"A lesser monster showed me the way. Now, please. Let a better doctor do the same."

The old man did just that.

"_I was so torn up, I was almost goin' to do what some would say I shoulda done at the start. Tell Petey to go to Hell and solve his own damn moral dilemmas. Then, just as though that old android wannabe Vulcan was standing right ovah my shoulder, I realized that all I was doing was looking at mechanical things. A doctor versus a tyrant. Old fool is what I was. Neither of those terms told me a single damn thing I needed to know_."

"_The only people in a position to give me that sort o' information were the people training you in the fine and noble arts of healing sentient life. They would know the man you were, and the man you might become. There's people out there who can fool The Archangels, The Devil and Ole Spock, but when we're thinkin' clearly, there ain't no one born that can fool a doctor. Not about what matters. Problem was, you can't exactly go wanderin' up and broaching the subject of whether a student has gotten genetic enhancements. That'd be the same as reporting you. But this old Georgia hound-dog is cleverer than some. So I thought of somethin' else I know about doctors. We make up our minds really quick, and we have a contempt for hard-and-fast rules that would even make Jim mad, on occasion, and you know he didn't have no legs to stand on in that arena_."

A fact, Julian briefly mused bitterly, that seemed to have kept on through the man's nephew.

"_So I spoke to one and all, under the pretext that a diplomatically connected fellow cadet with a possible axe to grind had accused some of his peers of cheating. I said to them that it was the kind of situation needed a quiet touch, and they believed me. Lord, it's just like the man said. Once you can fake sincerity, you've got it made. I didn't name no names on either end. I just asked them about stand-out students who might arouse jealousy enough to bring about false charges. Yes, son. Your name came up every single time, with every single instructor, even those of them that didn't particularly care for you_."

Bashir felt he knew who was who on that list, though many grudges from that period had been settled. One instructor actually seemed relieved about his exposure by Zimmerman. The instructor explained that it reduced Julian's 'mad skills' to the comprehensible, and that whatever problems he'd had with Bashir, he'd liked Louis Zimmerman even less. Some rumors had it that even Zimmerman's most famous creation, the EMH Mark One lost in the Delta Quadrant, had used less than glowing terms to describe him during his trans-quadrant program transmission.

"What if I had become the holographic template? I do fancy redheads..."

McCoy continued.

"_I still wasn't learning anything. You had the skills, but that's mechanics. You had the knowledge, but then so does the damned computer, and half the time, that Christine Chapel wannabe is 'unable to comply.' I swear that monstrosity must regard that message as its primary function! Ehh–sorry. Point being, skills and knowledge are dry. They need lubricant to mean anything, and for us, that lubricant is a little thing people call compassion. Skills are something that's burned into you. Knowledge is something you learn. Compassion–the sense of just plain giving a damn about your patients before anything else? Well, that can elevate even a mediocre physician, and the lack of it can drag down a full-blown impresario, an undisputed genius. I helped destroy Apollo, Julian. But I also took an oath by him. So did you. And it's how deep the main gist of that oath gets us in the gut that says who we will be as doctors. You know those words_."

Indeed, he did.

"First, Do No Harm."

"_So I went back again and asked if the attitudes of any one cadet would cause problems. Damned if you weren't all over the map, same as before. Bashir is obsessive, they would tell me. Everything has to be perfect. Patient has to be comfortable, patient has to have quality and dignity while treated, and patient has to have confidence that they can be made well. They said you drove them so crazy, they couldn't wait to unleash you on the galaxy. Then I took time to read your sophomore paper, 'Understanding The Anti-Fluoridation Movement in Ancient America'. Dry as the Gobi, my dear boy. A Vulcan woulda put it down to grab a brewski, or at least they would have seriously thought about it_."

Bashir winced.

"Miles, meet Leonard. Leonard, Miles."

McCoy smiled onscreen.

"_But after I got the cotton out of my mouth, I knew I had what I needed. Because in that dry text I found words like_ 'what is good for the patient must be explained to the patient', 'simple assurances are given by salespeople, not doctors'_, and best of all_, 'we must never fight potential ignorance of medical knowledge with our ignorance of the care-recipients wishes and concerns. If the cure for death itself is delivered with a lecture about how foolish people were to have died, then people will continue dying, for we as physicians will have failed to make that cure real to those who most need it.' _Mister Bashir, I became responsible for you in that moment, for I told Petey that the crime in question was not Eugenics, but anything that kept a man with your healing powers from joining our ranks. I didn't father you, and I didn't remake you. I never even instructed you. We have never met, and likely never will. But young Mister Kirk would have followed my lead, no matter what I said. So I suppose you can say, for whatever it may be worth, that the career of Doctor Julian Bashir enjoys the blessing of Doctor Leonard McCoy. And with that blessing also comes that ultimate price : Unwanted advice."_

Which couldn't be farther from the truth, so far as Bashir was concerned. He was listening intently.

"_There will come a moment from which you must go on, Julian. That moment will be when you realize that you have deliberately violated your Healer's Oath. If it hasn't come yet, it will come. We don't live in an ideal world. And I don't mean no little violation. I mean great big, you had one choice and you made the one that ended a life, and you realize that you did it, knowing that there was another, more moral way. My time came when Gorkon lay dying before me, and I realized that, out of spite, I had never bothered to even really glance at all the available material on Klingon physiology. My patient died in part because I was a racist. I can't even begin to let you know what that means to a man of my heritage. Your time may not be as clear cut, or it may be so zero-one, your horror may be even greater than mine. But I in the end judged myself to be of a caliber of doctor that owed the galaxy my continued service, flawed though it was. If you respect me, sir, then you will go past your moment, no matter what. You owe me that, Julian Bashir. I could have shut you down before you ever touched a bedpan. And even though my choice is made for my own reasons, you still owe me. So whatever that dark night happens to include, get over it and get to the morning. Things always look better then_."

Bashir couldn't imagine such a time. But he felt the arguable debt in his core, so he silently assented to obey McCoy's wishes.

"_Well, that's it. Another one of the fine points in my life put paid to. I figure on checking out soon, Doctor. I figure I waited eighty years for Jim to come back, and as you likely heard, he just recently did that. Man was literally late for his own funeral. He never will change. But I'm going to be on time for mine. Otherwise, Spock would never let me hear the end of it. God Bless You, Doctor Julian Bashir. That is, if your beliefs run that way. That is the last word_."

A wholly awestruck Bashir replayed the message seven times that evening, and only after the final replay did he have a response.

"I don't know that I believe in God, Leonard. But I do believe that from time to time, there are angels among us. One just gave me his blessing."

Feeling a heartening he had not felt since delivering a people from a Dominion-created plague, Doctor Julian Bashir contemplated what was essentially the blessing of the greatest practitioner of his craft.

He then contacted a man in transit back to Earth who, whatever his origins, seemed a bit like an eerie mirror of where a man simultaneously accepted, respected, feared and mercurial might go, given time.

"Thank You, Admiral Kirk. For keeping your silence in the past, and for delivering that message in the present. To know that my life was touched in some way by Leonard McCoy's is the fulfillment of a Starfleet doctor's dream."

"A spy may have to be a good liar, Doctor. But exposing you would have also made me a hypocrite, and that goes a lot deeper."

Onscreen, Kirk then took on a sullen look.

"I do have one more piece of advice, Julian."

"That being, Admiral?"

"Avoid Luther Sloane. You see, I trained him. Taught him everything he knows, and every method he uses. I also tried to teach him, like all my people in that organization, some measure of moral restraint."

"I see, sir. Well, you can't fault yourself for failing with Sloane."

"You don't understand, Doctor. Luther is among the very few I managed to succeed with. The others in 31 are far, far worse than he could ever hope to be. Section 31 is full of liars, and it is a lie itself. No joke, there. The shadows it uses to hide don't need light to exist."

"I–will keep all that in mind, Admiral."

Indeed, he always would. Not because of Peter Kirk, though. Because of Luther Sloane.

_**12**_

To most members of the DS9 staff, the end of this series of events meant that life could resume. Keiko O'Brien had departed for Bajor, Molly and Yoshi in tow, to survey lands that Captain Sisko had optioned for possible purchase, to check them against the possibility of disrupting any rare plant life. Quark and Garak were in their shops, and whatever business they were engaged in beyond their public ones would not be known this day. Odo was likely as not engaged in trying to see what Quark's unknown business was about, and talking with Garak about almost anything.

Chief Miles O'Brien was able to hear some welcome words of contrition.

"Chief? About my raising my voice to you a while back?"

"Yes, Ensign?"

Nog breathed in.

"I checked regulations. I am a commissioned officer. You are an NCO. Technically, I outrank you and can do things like raising my voice to you without consequence, so long as it remains within some sort of decorum. In other words, I was fully within my rights to do so."

O'Brien nodded.

"And?"

"And–CHIEF–"

Nog smiled.

"I'll never ever do it again–sir."

O'Brien seemed to like hearing this.

"Good lad."

_**13**_

Benjamin Sisko then heard an idea as ambitious and as ridiculous as anything Timothy Watters had ever come up with.

"Interview the Valiant crew's parents? Borrow the Defiant, Jake. You're not their favorite person. More like their favorite target. At least now that Nog's been cleared."

"You mean that, don't you? How can every single one of them be so angry as to not see the truth of it all?"

At a slight remove, Sisko looked at his son with near-pity as to not see the power of anger to consume a life and shape choices, when at that very moment in time, in the heavens beyond the station, the Dominion War continued.


	11. Part Ten

Part Ten

"**Life–Goes On Day After Day. Hearts Torn- In Every Way."**

**Gerry Marsden And The Pacemakers, 'Ferry Cross The Mersey'**

_**1**_

The truth is, we never get to see the real start or the real end of any story. Such is the case of Space Station Deep Space Nine. So we won't try for something so ambitious. Since glimpses are all we ever really get, than these are all we shall really seek.

_**EMPOK NOR, EARLY 2376**_

"I believe the question was a simple and straightforward one, Colonel."

At least to appearances, Colonel Kira Nerys was in the worst position possible. She was trapped on a broken down station that was a duplicate of her own, possessing none of the soul Deep Space Nine had been lent by its inhabitants over the course of almost seven years. The people tending and guarding her were Bajorans, people she was both sympathetic to and disgusted by. Led in part by a man she would have once sworn by, they had abandoned their faith in fear and panic, and were planning to ritually spurn the Prophets' greatest gift, their own lives, seeking to curry the favor of the pure hatred that was embodied in the Pagh Wraiths.

"I had no idea you even knew how to ask that kind of question, Dukat."

The true coordinator of the insanity was no surprise to her. He was no longer able to shock or sadden her with his actions. Kira could not keep herself from getting angry, though. The monster still knew how to accomplish that. She could, however, hold that anger off for a time.

"If the question makes you uncomfortable, or if you simply don't want to answer it, I will of course completely understand."

Almost everything could be twisted as a victory for him. Her silence certainly would give him that impression.

"Uncomfortable? Dukat, Admiral Kirk acquitted Ensign Nog of certain charges, lectured him on avoiding being in that position again, and then left the station to give what little support he could as the Defiant went on a mission that is now very publicly known to have involved destroying the same Dominion battle cruiser that destroyed the Valiant. He was a nice old man who bored us to tears with heroic tales of his glorious uncle."

"Heh. In that, he's hardly changed at all."

"Perhaps he feels he can't measure up to the great legend."

Cut him, she thought. Cut him deeply. Cut him the only way he truly ever could be cut. With doubt. Take this avatar of anti-faith, and infect his cocky certainty with vagueness.

"A nice try, Colonel. But some of our dear believers have conveyed to me how you and the Admiral spoke for nearly an hour, very much alone."

"Well, you've found us out. The old man seduced me, and we're running off together at war's end. Just don't tell his wife, alright?"

"Vulgar and unworthy of you, my dear Colonel."

"Fine. I spoke to the Admiral about finally accepting the Bajora Peace Medal. He was reluctant to do so, based on his past withdrawal of Starfleet forces."

Her level of success was revealed in his next question.

"But what of your mother, Colonel?"

She would yell at him, and call him a loathsome murderer. But she would not do it just then, and never over the subject of Kira Meru.

"Unlike you, the Admiral didn't claim to have had an affair with her."

The true victory was achieved then. She didn't have to be the best actress in the universe. She only had to make her enemy believe that it was possible his plan had failed. Not that it had failed. But that it could have.

"Someday, Maj–Colonel, we will have to have a talk about all that. For now, though, enjoy our hospitality."

In short, whatever he had hoped to get from this game, he hadn't. Kira would never see Dukat again, after that day. Her Captain and her gods would end the madman's reign.

But by simply refusing to confirm that she had been touched or hurt by his actions, Kira hurt Dukat where he lived. Sometimes, she knew, that was all you could hope for.

_**2**_

_**SECTOR 001, TERRA**_

_**THAT DREADFUL DAY, COME ROUND AT LAST**_

"Dorian, where's Annalith?"

Dorian Collins was very near to finally being mustered forward. Her steadfast refusal to take either praise or garbage for her role in the Valiant incident had earned her the respect her addled shipmates had never really given her.

"Split in two. They were tractor-beaming a cable from the Golden Gate. Dragging it across the city. A fragment broke off, and she–she just stood there."

"This isn't supposed to happen. This is Earth!"

Dorian saw Admiralty Tower fall onto Cadet Hall. The casualty potential, even if both structures had been fully evacuated, staggered her mind.

"Tell that to the Breen."

Collins and her friend moved in two separate directions, for rumors abounded that there were Breen and Jem'Hadar on the ground as well. As she moved for one of the many shelters that now seemed not so safe as they had mere hours ago, Dorian spotted a silver-haired man trying to access a stubborn door.

"Sir? Come with me. The shelter's over this way."

The old man turned, looking both frail and made of iron, all at the same time.

"Cadet, help me access this door! There's a hidden phaser battery in here, dating from the near-war after Gorkon's assassination. If it still works, we can take out some of those bastards."

Despite all the great and interesting people she had so recently met, Collins was directly thrown by the identity of the elderly Asian man.

"You're Admiral Sulu."

Sulu had no patience for her awe.

"Yes, and those are the Breen. Are you capable of following orders, Cadet?"

"Sir!"

"Good. Then get this door open. Together, we can operate this battery."

"Sir, I don't have any experience with a stationary battery, and begging the Admiral's pardon, your hands are shaking."

"You be the hands, Cadet. I'll be the experience. You up for this, Cadet–?"

"Collins, sir. Dorian Collins."

Dorian considered that her career record would include Acting CMO aboard a Defiant-Class, not to mention service under Sisko, Kirk, and now Sulu. Well, sort-of. Whatever the circumstances that had brought all that about, she could have no complaints about a dull ride.

"I am ready, Admiral."

Together, they breached the battery's interior, took control of it, and made at least some of the invaders regret their brazenness. One by one, some of the smaller attack craft meant to sow chaos in San Francisco fell and were no more. This heroic stand continued for two full hours, youthful zeal tempered by primal experience.

Then the Breen lead-ship targeted their position.

**POSTHUMOUS SERVICE MEDALS AWARDED TO : **

**COLLINS, DORIAN ALICE, SENIOR CADET, 2356-2376**

**SULU, HIKARU, ADMIRAL, RETIRED, 2234-2376**

_**3**_

Today was not the day for secrets, the old man reasoned. He had gotten as many of his cadets – his children – to safety as he could before the structure just collapsed around him. He was moving a chunk of stone three times his size off his leg when Sloane found him.

"Sir, you should be in a shelter!"

Peter Kirk brushed some dust from his moustache.

"Good to see you too, Luther. How's the family?"

The covert man threw up his arms in a very open gesture of frustration.

"Well, I do worry about having to bury a man like my own father. Admiral—I need you to call Demora on Cestus Three. I can't. She hauled my butt out of Cardie space, back when."

Kirk closed his eyes. *_Hikaru. Good passage, Onii-Chan_.*

"I imagine there'll be quite a few calls to be made, after today. Were the attacks wide-ranging?"

"We don't even know that they're done yet. But seventy-five percent of what we know of it occurred right here. This place will never be the same."

Sloane glanced at a dead Jem'Hadar. The soldier had a stunned look on his face.

"You take a lot of chances, old man."

"He surprised me. Huh. Oh, Dear. What are you planning, Luther?"

The agent provocateur smiled.

"It's been in the works since Leyton. It'll go active soon. It will end this, once and for all."

Kirk knew better than to ask more on that subject.

"I need to call home, then get to Alynna and Ed Jellico."

Sloane's smile vanished.

"The attackers never came near Seattle, sir. Your wife and children are safe."

Kirk took the grim inference, and after calling a logically frantic spouse, placed a call to Deep Space Nine.

"Pete?"

"Ben. I thought you should know, in case it affects operations. Admiralty Tower was struck through by a Breen suicide attack. Even-even to the bunkers. You have a better chance of reaching Enterprise in your sector. I ask that you inform Picard as soon as possible. Before the newsfeeds get this."

Sisko put his head in his hands. The pair had been difficult, but now every last disagreement seemed petty indeed.

"A full decap-strike. Pete, they'll be calling for trilithium warfare."

"They won't get it. My daughter Garrette—Rachel's daughter, left with us before the Enterprise-C vanished—is acting CIC for the duration. She'll hear her folks. Ross will have outright charge over frontline operations, till some things get cleared up. Try not to boss him around too much, Ben."

"I will try, sir."

There was no more time to chat, and barely time to mourn.

**ARCHER LIFETIME ACHIEVEMENT AWARDS ISSUED IN THE MEMORY OF :**

**JELLICO, EDWARD, ADMIRAL**

**NECHAYEV, ALYNNA, ADMIRAL**

The day would only grow longer, and a bitterly-won victory, though only a few months away, seemed to take a lifetime to come.

_**4**_

_**DESOLATE CARDASSIA**_

Martok's stomach did somersaults.

"Did NO ONE think to keep the blood-wine fresh?"

Such was his nausea that he did not brush off Worf's helping hand.

"Sisko and Ross have no honor! They should be sick with me! They should have kept to their oath, to toast over our foes' corpses."

Worf shook his head.

"Better that Humans keep to being what they are. I despise all those would-be Klingons except the very most committed."

Martok sought a chair, and nodded.

"As do I. But I will demand that Sisko drink hearty, once we have word of Dukat's capture or execution. On that, I will not relent, and if he tries to...ohhhaaagghhhhhhrr!"

Worf gained knowledge of the full measure of Martok's discomfort by his next question.

"Where is Bashir?"

But this was an answer Worf did not have. And Martok was not the only commanding officer having fits as to where to find the Doctor.

_**5**_

"You should be fine, now."

Wandering a landscape as blasted as his own soul, Julian helped who he could, where he could. As had many a patient in this shattered place, the Cardassian woman asked him a favor.

"Tell them we're sorry. Please. Will you tell them that for me? Ask them to forgive us."

He later mused, that, had his brainpower been natural or earned, it might have taken him less time to figure out that these pleadings were aimed not at the Bajorans, but at The Prophets.

"Hardly matters. Whether I believed in them or not, I won't be dwelling with them."

Julian still later realized that he didn't know any such thing about the Prophets, and their possible view of his recent actions. A Bajoran lover. A dear friend with whom he'd seen the dark side of existence, and who he had helped deliver a child with. Clerics haughty and humble, laity mob-like and intellectual, and interns who learned to fear him before the Pagh Wraiths. Yet for all that, Bashir knew almost nothing of these people's central beliefs, outside the rudiments.

"Miles is right. I am stuck-up."

If he weren't, he knew Sisko would be willing to stick him up above the Promenade for taking this very unauthorized excursion. But one of the amazing handful of people now credited with ending the war couldn't have cared less. Because Cardassian faces, unlike Humans, were very hard for even an overtired mind to morph into the face of the late Luther Sloane.

"Fear of us spurred the Founders to immoral acts. Fear of the Founders spurred us to an immoral act. I undid the one immoral act, in order to save a friend. I did this by pushing a man to his death. My friend was cured, and saved his people, ending the war. Doctor Julian Bashir saves creation, and all it cost him was that small thing they mention in holy books. Billions will not die in a hideous and pointless final battle. Yet all I care about is a dead oath sworn by the name of a forgotten Greek deity. That–and the need to stop talking to myself."

"I don't know about that, Doctor. You've always been good company, quite easy to talk to, and that is so very hard to find."

Bashir looked over at the shadowed figure.

"You were right, Garak. I had not the slightest clue about the true devastation of your world. I don't know how you kept from slitting my throat as I made my optimistic chit-chat."

Garak grabbed the physician before his final collapse occurred.

"I had seven years to acclimate to you, Julian. I actually resent myself, more than you. I let this hell-field get to me. Truth be told, I honestly never expected to return to an intact Cardassia. I knew that if I were to truly come back, it would have to be after devastation."

It was clear on the Cardassian's tired face that knowing something like this beforehand had been of no comfort, when the hypothetical became the actual.

"I'm not sorry I went out there."

"I am. You gave hope to the hopeless, Doctor. A dangerous thing. Especially when any more hope is at least several hard weeks away. On the other hand, you have no idea how much I hope that the Bajorans know about the history of your world's German Weimar Republic. That kind of perspective is really our only hope for aid from a near neighbor. Especially when we've been such horrid ones."

Arriving at the house a woman like his own mother had lived and died in, Elim Garak sat his meal companion of many years down.

"I actually had occasion to talk with Chief O'Brien."

Bashir drank some much needed water.

"And after you two discussed how annoying I can be?"

"Well, that always does come first. But he had also some practical advice. Amazing man, the Chief. He reminded me that, given how transitory our lives can be, letting things end between us the way they did was probably not very wise."

Bashir took on a bit of O'Brien.

"If you try and hug me, I swear that I will slug you."

"He also told me that, in order to obtain the cure for the good Constable's degenerative disorder, you were forced to kill a man."

Julian nodded, and said two words.

"Sloane. Thirty-One."

Garak looked almost impressed by this.

"That does make sense. My father wouldn't have approved, though. Viruses are so impersonal."

Garak at last became fully serious again.

"Julian, you had to kill a man, quite deliberately. Don't sit there with that Healer's conscience and tell me you're all right with it. Even experienced field agents have trouble girding themselves for the inflicting of a slow death."

Bashir found the chair had grown roots, and would not let him up.

"If I had moved faster to do what I had to do to get the cure, then Odo could have gotten the Female Founder to surrender that much quicker, and more of your people would be alive."

"Nice try, Doctor. But wars are rarely messier than right before they end. If Odo had cured her too soon, she might have reconsidered surrendering. Then maybe all of my people would have died. I won't allow you the luxury of what-if. You undertook as harsh an action as the core of Julian Bashir would ever allow. For that, you have my admiration."

Garak leaned forward in his own chair.

"You also have my worry. I would really prefer not to hear of your suicide by guilt."

Bashir chuckled.

"I've had some interesting nightmares. The worst involved my entire life from the enhancement on being another Thirty-One simulation. The strangest involved a remote ancestor of mine trying to enlist me in some sort of dimension-shattering fighting tournament. My brilliant solution to all this was to avoid sleep."

"So what will you do, Doctor?"

Bashir finally managed to get up, and signal a furious Sisko as to his whereabouts. He then looked at Garak.

"I made a promise to keep on going, even through a crisis such as this. The man I promised told me that the best thing to do was to get through this night, and into the morning. Whether things are truly better then, they always tend to look better."

"Interesting theory. Who was this man? A philosopher? A Vedek? A poet?"

Bashir considered an alternate life, one where people occasionally spoke of that odd little man named Jules who cleaned the bio-beds in Sickbay. It had no appeal, even for the value of avoiding his shame.

"None of the above. No, this man was, in the end, simply an old country doctor. And I should be so lucky to ever stand in his shadow."

With things no longer as they were, yet far from being completely repaired between them, the doctor and the spy parted ways, both needing healing whose art was written in no text and which could not be speeded up by any known science.

The Dominion War was over, but it would be many generations before its raw taste left the mouths of any of its survivors.


	12. Epilogue

Epilogue

"**I Can't Understand–How Life Goes On The Way It Does"**

**- Skeeter Davis, 'The End Of The World'**

_**A DAY AS ANY OTHER, Late 2375**_

_**1**_

Kai Yarka Faitos held up the document, signed by the Federation President and First Minister Shakaar.

"Behold, we are one of many. Our identity not subsumed, but contributing to a living thing. Not held in static fear, like our recent foes, nor serving a hive mind. But part of a challenge to all we know, and a challenge to all that our new siblings in the cosmos presume. The Vulcans call it IDIC. A lesser mind, trapped by a narrow view of the Prophets' Will, would call this the diminishment of Bajor. But those who have studied the Federation know that it is the members who shape it, not the other way around."

Colonel Kira, who had begged off the ceremony for fear of being a distraction, watched with Lieutenant Nog in her office. The young Ferengi had been studying the politics of the Federation membership debate, but was as surprised as anyone by the early entry of Bajor, so close to the war's end.

"So does this mean happily ever after, Colonel?"

"Nog, I trust happily ever after about as far as I can throw it. Something will come up. It won't be as blatant as the Dominion. It may not even be an enemy, or have a true face. But mark my cynic's soul, it will show up."

Nog was about to say something vaguely optimistic, but his leg took that moment to be off its calibration by approximately a quarter second. It was not enough to trip him up. But it was enough to reinforce the notion that perhaps a little cynicism was a healthy thing.

"Still, Colonel. It's hard to believe that a moderate like Yarka got the nod."

Kira agreed, but was perhaps less surprised by this.

"I had heard that some descendants and hangers-on of the Circle conspiracy held a major meeting about their plans for the shape of post-war Bajor on one of the outer colonies. Just like the Terrans, they somehow thought the Dominion would never attack them. I don't like labeling people. But if that group of reactionaries had lived, especially in light of Winn Adami's unholy acts, then post-war Bajor would be a very, very different place right now. And yet, they were also some of the most committed."

"I don't follow you."

"Nog, sometimes the zealot is needed. Bajor may find that, without these people shrilly urging us to stay on the strictly held path of the Prophets, a kind of moral drift may set in. Yarka says he wants his office purified by shedding most of its powers of state. But the other Vedeks, far from following his example, are moving to take the power he's not using."

"A coup?"

"No–I believe Miles called it Pork Barrel. Vedek Onnam pointed out to the UFP negotiators that the Dominion spent resources on Bajor's public works that the Federation had never even approached. The Federation President met that challenge, and a lot of money will be flowing into Bajor's coffers. But as for Starfleet's Admirals, so for the Vedeks, Intercessors, and Senior Mass Clerics. Everyone has ideas about how that money should be spent–and by who."

Nog shook his head.

"It's always about money, isn't it?"

He shook his head again.

"I didn't really just say that, did I?"

Kira raised her glass of root beer.

"To Bajor's entry–and those infectious Terrans."

Nog raised his glass.

"To two of those Terrans–both missing since war's end."

Kira shut off the concluding broadcast, and got up from the desk she was now determined to replace. The office and title she would make her own. But that desk was his. Not the desk of a nascent god, no matter her beliefs, and these were strong. But the desk of her captain. With Kassidy Yates now living with family in the former DMZ (the poor woman was tired of having her pregnant stomach revered), Kira planned to stock the house Benjamin Sisko bought with his things. A museum, were he gone too long. A house, if he were not.

"I know how you feel. I was standing with him, looking out at the wormhole, when he turned and said he heard his father call him. Nog–have you considered that he, too, is of the bloodline of the Prophets?"

"Colonel, all respect. But my stepmother is Bajoran, and the thought of having to offer reverent thanks to my slob of a roommate? There just isn't enough latinum for that."

Nerys might well have called him on this comment, however politely Nog phrased it. But the idea of praying to Jake gave her borderline blasphemous thoughts, as well.

"His work was getting better. Did he show you his final draft for 'Time's Visitor'?"

"He did. It pulls the heart-strings, sure. But I hate temporal reset stories. They're almost as cheap as my Unc—."

*ALL HANDS, ALL HANDS! TEMPORAL RED ALERT! INCURSION IN AND AROUND OPS. COLONEL KIRA, REPORT.*

"Kira here, Nicenz. On my way out."

"Colonel, could it be the Captain?"

Kira didn't respond, but she almost hoped not. The Emissary's re-emergence on this day could cause some on the Vedek Council to reconsider their vote, signatures aside.

"Well, it's not Captain Sisko, anyway."

The lanky young man looked around as the last of the trans-temporal energies faded.

"I'm back. Nog–Nerys–it's me–it's Jake!"

Both Nog and Kira seemed confused by this.

"Jake, we'll get you something from Uncle's."

"Jake, why did you just identify yourself?"

The younger Sisko shrugged.

"Well, my hairstyle, my beard, a few lines. Come on, it's not like I look..."

Jake caught his reflection in a panel. He gasped to see a man who had none of the things mentioned..

"Dad, what did you do?"

Nog grew impatient.

"Jake, where have you been these past twelve weeks?"

Jake's eyes truly went wide, now.

"Twelve weeks? Nog, I was gone twelve years!"

_**2**_

Agent Dulmer of Temporal Affairs did not look like a happy man.

"You were on Earth in the 20th Century from when to when?"

Jake Sisko kept looking in the mirror. His face appeared perfectly normal, yet this seemed to disturb him.

"For the third time, I was there from June of 1962 until September of 1974. I stayed with my ancestors from that era in a place called River Bend, Missouri. They never learned anything more than our previous contacts had given them."

"You're certain? No unconscious attempts to change things? Let's face it, those twelve years are to ancient America what the past seven have been to Bajor, in many respects. Lots of room for slip-ups."

Jake breathed in, clearly impatient with all this.

"You got me, alright? I spilled the beans, and for some reason, they all wanted to know about J. Edgar Hoover's final fate. I didn't know enough about it to say anything. Time-space saved!"

The sarcasm was utterly lost on its target.

"Did you bequeath any knowledge of 24th Century technology?"

"No."

"Are you certain? Any little leak—"

Jake turned from the mirror.

"This conversation is over."

"I still have questions, Mister Sisko."

"I'm sure. But see, I'm not Starfleet. My father, who sent me to stay in the 20th Century, is. He's required to answer your questions. I'm not. So whatever millennium he happens to come back in, have your people talk to him then. Myself, I'm not speaking with him right now."

Both Dulmer and his partner Lucsly, there to receive Kira's report about Dukat's travels through time, soon departed the station. Kira attempted to talk with Jake.

"Did your visit end badly?"

"Sort of. Grandma Mildred died in March."

Kira remembered that bunch very well.

"Jake, I'm sorry. She was a nice person."

"Thanks. But it wasn't that, Nerys. By and large, the whole visit was great. I loved almost every bit of it. By the time I was done, townsfolk who'd warned me not to look at their daughters were as happy to see me as anyone on this station. I have ideas for stories and articles you just wouldn't believe."

"But?"

Jake looked as tired as she had ever seen him.

"I love you, Nerys. You are the kind of friend I would never want to even risk losing or offending. But my feelings about how I was sent there are not positive ones, and they involve the Prophets. Maybe not fairly. But they do. If I promise not to stew for too long, will you let me work this out alone?"

She took his hand, nodded and smiled.

"You know, sometimes it's the truest believers that say the harshest things. I might be harder to offend than you think."

"Granpa Sherman was that way about the US Army. But in this case, let me have something coherent to say before we talk, okay?"

"Okay. But if you can't trust in them, Jake–at least trust in *him*."

"That's just it, Nerys. I think I have less trouble trusting the them than I do the him."

With those somewhat ominous words, they parted company. Kira had to make a choice about joining Starfleet, and Jake had to rejoin life in his native century.

Both would be a long while in doing this.

_**3**_

_**Two Years Later-One Of Those Days**_

"Just tell me you'll forgive him, eventually."

Jake shrugged at his on-screen stepmother.

"Kassidy, you know it's not as simple as all that. He took away twelve years of my life, without debate or discussion. I don't even have him here to yell at, or to try and explain it to me."

In the quarters he and his father once shared, Jake tried to not seem dismissive of her concerns.

"But he forgave me, and I betrayed him."

"Yeah, but you're prettier than he is."

"Young man–do not try and compliment your way out of this. I'll let it go for now, because your brother wants to see you next month. But Jake, please try and forgive him."

"When he asks for it, Mom. Not before."

Kassidy looked stunned at the simple title. Jake nodded.

"I figured it was time I stopped confusing my little brother with calling you by name. And please–let me forgive him at my own pace."

"Agreed—Sonny."

As she signed off, Nog nudged his roommate yet again.

"Took you long enough. The poor lady's only been trying like crazy to have your approval."

"I never once withheld it. But Mom was something I wanted to save for a special occasion. That she earned it isn't even in dispute to me."

Nog sighed.

"You still make people work for it, Jake. I'm glad our friendship is free from latinum. I could never afford you, otherwise. That's at least partly a compliment, by the way."

"And now, you'll want me to forgive my father."

"What did he really do that was so bad?"

Jake tried yet again, knowing there were other tries ahead.

"The fact that he sent me to the 20th Century without debate annoys me. The fact that he brought me back and erased my ageing while there gets to me, because that face was mine. I earned it. But what I can't forgive is, he won't even take two seconds out of eternity to talk with me and say why he did it all."

"Yeah. Well, I've thought about that. And I think I may have something."

"Nog–don't."

The young Ferengi shook his head.

"It's not an excuse. Its why I think Captain Sisko did what he did."

Jake was at least intrigued.

"Let's hear it."

Nog looked over at a framed latinum engraving of the Grand Nagus. The man couldn't help but look goofy, even so enthroned.

"I love my father. But I've never once had the illusion that he was perfect. You have. Maybe not the way you once did, but you once saw your father in that light. Maybe he needed to do something dismissive and incomprehensible to you so that you could learn once again that whatever we all thought of him, he was still just a man. I dunno after that. Maybe he's trying to adjust you to his never coming back. Or maybe there's something we don't know yet. Something you'll find out someday while doing some research, maybe. Am I making any sense?"

Jake felt a chill, as though Nog had stepped on his grave.

"I kind of think you do."

_**4**_

DS9 was now a different place. Its doctor and counselor, so much a part of its emotional maelstrom these past years, had departed to do rehab work on shattered Betazed.

"Good luck, Julian. Maybe that outspoken mouth will actually play there."

As for its current Commanding Officer, she was allowed to use her outspoken mouth to say that bittersweet goodbye and then again a much happier one.

"Assistant Security Chief aboard the Titan, sir?"

Nog stood stunned. His own father's elevation to the throne of his people hadn't thrown him half as much.

"Admiral Kirk knows some people there, Lieutenant. Captain Riker will be expecting your best. There's just one condition. One thing that you must always remember."

"What is it, Colonel?"

"You must always remember what became of the man who suddenly got everything he ever wanted."

"Why? What happened to him?"

Kira smiled.

"He lived happily ever after."

After about a minute, Nog gave in and shook his head.

"Is...is there any reason why he wouldn't? I mean, he did have everything he ever wanted."

Kira sighed.

"Admiral Saavik had it right. Humor. A most difficult concept."

As Nog began a long, long series of goodbyes and messages spreading word of his good fortune, Kira recorded her life-altering choice in an official log. Much as she had loved and admired her Emissary, she could not bring herself to join Starfleet. The Bajoran Militia no longer existed, except as local and provincial constabulary. She said the only words she could and remain true to herself..

"Pending the arrival of my replacement, I stand relieved. This post has been all my honor."

The Captain. Herself. The O'Briens. Julian. Ezri. Worf. Nog. The place they'd all called home was about to change forever. Onscreen, the good-naturedly inquisitive Kirk smiled to hear that Nog had accepted his help once again.

"Pushing an old man's overspent luck, Colonel, where will you go?"

The urge to tell him to go sit on his thumb was easy to shut off. The old man was just too damned nice about his intrusiveness.

"I've been in contact with Legate Ghemor's family on Cardassia. With at least some stability restored, he can now be buried without fear of grave violation, on a free Cardassia. Its time I kept that promise."

When Kirk had congratulated her and signed off, she took time to call Cardassia.

"We await the return of my uncle's body, Colonel. Tell me, do you do this as his daughter?"

"Just like I've always promised, Keten."

Keten Ghemor nodded onscreen.

"Then I must ask you to do one more thing."

"What is it?"

"Colonel Kira Nerys, daughter by heart of Tekeny Ghemor, will you stand in our people's first free election as our clan's candidate for President of the Legatorium?"

Kira of course refused to give an answer right away, bizarre though the request was. Once the call was done, she had to fight the urge to laugh out loud.

*_With my luck, I'll be running against Garak_...*

_**5**_

With all the departures, it was fair to say that Jake Sisko had expected a full rich day. What he had truly not expected, though, was a visit from the dead.

"Jadzia?"

Onscreen, the image of Dax's last - and, apologies to Ezri, the one he would always remember-incarnation spoke in a hurried voice, as though she knew her time was short.

"It's a story, Jake. One told to you, and one you may or may not choose to tell."

"A story?"

He almost cursed himself for reacting to her, as though she were truly there. Then he saw it, on the wall behind her in the recording. A plaque, given to her for bravery in combat, from a mission that occurred only a month before her death. The plaque had been given to her only a week before, and he knew she had not immediately mounted it, complaining of its odd shape.

"You can call it a truncated fairy tale, if you like. Once upon a time, there was a boy who had to save the galaxy, and that's just what he did. Problem was–he began to feel like he could stumble through cold actions that had to be thought through. One of these actions would forever haunt his soul."

Jake felt that touch of the grave once again. Dax would not have sent such a thing if the 'boy' in the story were Curzon, or one of the other male Dax incarnations. It had to mean only one person, and odds were this message was only to be sent if most thought that person was dead or otherwise gone.

.

"Jake, fathers sometimes make mistakes. They also sometimes make harsh decisions, and speak harsh truths. Truths we may not be prepared to hear."

Jake thought the message-file was somehow emitting cold.

"Contained in a package sent along with this message is a data-chip. Benjamin asked that it be given to you if he went missing for an extended period after war's end. He gave it to me precisely because I'm outside what for most is the normal cycle of life, and have some perspective that a Miles, a Julian, or a Kira might not. They might not honor his wish, once they knew what was on that disc. All their loyalties are so fierce for the two of you. They might not be able to see that sometimes loyalty means honoring the truth, and not just the legend. Then again, I recorded this message precisely because, wherever I am when you get this, I wasn't entirely sure I could tell you myself. So it's all on auto, with a law firm Curzon knew. Be strong, Jake. As strong as I know you are, and have always been."

Jake thought the room must have somehow achieved absolute zero.

"This is bad."

Jake knew from discussions with all three Daxes he had known, that select memories could be 'fudged' deliberately so that the next incarnation would only know that there was a memory, and maybe who it was about, but nothing else. That might explain why Ezri had never mentioned this. But at that moment, such explanations were background noise, buzzings and static from the world of order, where things made sense. He felt certain he was about to leave that realm.

The young man played the contents of the chip.

A middle-aged man, now vanished, told of a secret once deleted.

The young man's personal cosmos fell off its axis.

_**6**_

Unable to sleep, Jake Sisko constructed a rough draft to submit to his editor, based on the information that had taken him apart. He studied this draft.

"How could you?"

*_No, Jake. How could I not? I could not allow the Dominion to win. I could not take the chance that their mania for order might turn genocidal, should their fears not be calmed by victory_.*

"You lied. You killed."

*_And yet when those ships joined the war effort, lives were saved, and the ability of people like you to report the truth was protected_.*

"You can't purchase clean goods with dirty money."

*_I was looking to win the dirtiest war in our memory_.*

"You made some questionable choices."

*_And now you must make a choice as well. I know you'll do the right thing_.*

"Will I? I used to base the right thing on what you would do. Now I have no idea what that might be. Was Jadzia lying?"

*_You've verified the message on several levels already. Your editor will insist on several more. I chose a good messenger, Jake. Not Bashir, O'Brien, or even the Colonel. They could never have told you, unless they had no choice. But Jadzia told me she always saw some of Curzon in you-in his wiser moments. She said that I sometimes reminded her of his less-than-wise moments. Only someone forced to deal with the damages of the last generation could know the burden of delivering my message_.*

"I think she understood what this would do to me. Why couldn't you? What value is there in truth and honesty, when the person who taught it to you flushed it out the airlock, the first time the going got rough?"

This time, no voice, real or imagined, was heard in response.

Jake spoke with Nog and Kira, and all three said too-quick goodbyes while leaving the station.

"Nog, will you always be my friend?"

"Haven't we been through that enough?"

"Trust me. We may have to go through it again."

"Jake, what are you saying?"

"Nerys, you may hear things in the next few months. When you do, please believe that I am telling the truth."

"Always."

"No. Not always. You're both the best, but if you somehow didn't have five seconds of doubt, you wouldn't be mortal. We're all of us mortal, and fallible. Even if some of us think otherwise."

One headed for the Federation's flagship. One headed for the world she once declared the center of evil in the universe. One headed for Earth, and the possible scorn of a quadrant.

Jake informed the new commanding officer that, the wishes of the Bajoran people aside, his father's quarters were now hers. He knew that soon, merely upsetting Bajorans' wishes would be the least of his worries. There was the possibility of a ban from the sector itself. Some of his father's friends–and some of his own, he realized–might choose to simply not believe the story. Others would ask why he went forward with a story like this, why he couldn't simply have buried it. Romulus, at least, would be bound by its own role in the deceptions, and only make some small noise.

He hoped.

_**7**_

In his cabin aboard the departing space-liner, he looked not at the receding image of Deep Space Nine, but at the words he had written.

"...and while I will always love my father, I now must speak of grim wartime choices he made. Not merely the choice to send young people to their deaths in battle. But the choice he made, and the conspiracy he undertook to bring the Romulan Empire into the war against The Dominion on the side of the Alliance. My source is my father's own recorded confession in this matter..."

It needed work, and several meetings with his editor. The reporter said a few words before going to his last sleep in the world he knew.

"Message 74205. Article : Telling By Jake Sisko."

He breathed in. He realized anew that his father's name and reputation were in his hands. He did what he believed his father would have wanted him to do, which is to do what he believed in. The ball would roll, now, beyond the ability of Captains, Admirals, Angels, Prophets or Saviors to stop. The final words came out more easily than he would have thought.

"Transmit all files."

THE END


End file.
